^LIBRARY OF CONGRESS J 



laA. U (p.^ I # 



Ux^^ITED STATES OF AMERICA.! 



-■a^^i) 



Extra Session of the 46th Congress. 



SPEECHES 



HON. JAMES A. GARFIELD, 

OF OHIO, 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 



the extra session, march is to JULY 1, 1879. 



WASH IN aTON 

18 79. 



^i^|<5- 



-of^'i 



BxTEA Session of the 46th Congress. 



SPEECHES 



OF 



HOI^. JAMES A. GARFIELD, 



OF OHIO 



IN THE 



HOUSE OF EEPRESENTATIVES, 



AT 



THE EXTEA SESSIOl^, MAECH 18 TO JULY 1, 1879. 



WASHINGTON 

1879. 



I. 

THE APPROPRIATION BILLS. 

1. FIEST AEMY BILL. 

EEVOLUTION IN CONGEESS. 
Saturday, Alareh 29, 1879. 

The Honso being in Committee of the 'Whole, aud having under consideration the 
Ibill (H. E. No. 1) making appropriations for the support of the Army for the fiscal 
year ending June 30, 1880, and for other purjjoses — 

Mr. Gaefield said: 

Mr. Chaieman : I have no hope of being able to convey to the mem- 
bers of this House ray own conviction of the very great gravity and 
solemnity of the crisis which this decision of the Chair and of the Com- 
mittee of the Whole has brought upon this country. I wish I could be 
proved a false prophet in reference to the result of this action. I wish 
I could be overwhelmed with the i^roof that I am utterly mistaken in. 
my views. But no view I have ever taken has entered more deeply and 
more seriously into my conviction than this, that the House has to-day 
resolved to enter upon a revolution against the Constitution and Gov- 
ernment of the United States. I do not know that this intention exists 
in the minds of half the Eepresentatives who occupy the other side of 
this Hall. I hope it does not. I am ready to believe it does not exist 
to any great extent. But I affirm that the consequence of the pro- 
gramme just adopted, if persisted in, will be nothing less than the total 
subversion of this government. 

THE QUESTION STATED. 

Let me in tlie outset state, as carefully as I may, the precise situation. 
At the last session, all our ordinary legislative work was done in accord- 
ance with the usages of the House and Senate, except as to two bills. 
Two of the twelve great appropriation bills for the sujiport of the gov- 
ernment were agreed to in both Houses as to every matter of detail con- 
cerning the approiiriations x^roper. We were assured by the committees 
of conference in both bodies that there would be no difficulty in adjust- 
ing all dilferences in reference to the amount of money to be appropriated 
and the objects of its appropriation. But the House of Eepresentatives 
proposed three measures of distinctly independent legislation; one ujion 
the Army appropriation bill, and two upon the legislative appropriation 
bill. The three grouped together are briefly these : First, the substantial 
modification of certain sections of the law relating to the use of the 
Army; second, the' repeal of the jurors' test oatli; and third, the repeal 
of the laws regulating elections of members of Congress. 

These three propositions of legislation were insisted upon by the 
House; but the Senate refused to adopt them. So far it was an ordi- 
nary proceeding, one which occurs, frequently in all legislative bodies. 



The Senate said to us through their conferees, "We are ready to pass 
the appropriation bills; but we are unwilling to pass as riders the three 
legislative measures you ask us to pass." Thereupon the House, through 
its conference committee, made the following declaration — and in order 
that I may do exact justice, I read from the speech of the distinguished 
Senator from Kentucky [Mr. BeckJ, on the report of the conference com- 
mittee : 

The Democratic conferees on the part of the House seem determined tliat unless 
those lights were secured to the people — 

alluding to the three points I have named — 

in the Inll sent to the Senate, they would refuse, under their constitutional right, to 
make appropriations to carry on the government, if tlie dominant majority in the 
Senate insisted upon the maintenance of these laws and refused to consent to theiir repeal. 

Then, after stating that if the position they had taken comi)elled an 
extra session, the new Congress would offer the repealing bills separately, 
and forecasting what would happen when the new House should be 
under no necessity of coercing the Senate, he said : 

If, however, the President of the United States, in the exercise of the )>ower vested 
in him, should see fit to vero tlie hills thus presented to him, * * * then I have no 
douht those same amendments will be again made part of the appropriation hills, and 
it will be for the President to determine whether he will block the wheels of govern- 
ment and refuse to accept necessary appropriations rather than allow the representa- 
tives of the people to repeal odious laws which they regard as subversive of their 
rights and privileges. * * * Whether that coiu'se is right or wrong, it will be adopted, 
and I have no doubt adhered to, no matter what happens with the appropriation bills. 

That was the proposition made by the Democracy in Congress at the 
close of the Congress now dead. 

Another distinguished Senator [Mr. Thurman] — and I may properly 
refer to Senators of a Congress not noAv in existence — re^iewing the 
situation, declared, in still more succinct terms : 

We claim the right, which the House of Commons in England established after two 
centuries of contest, to say that we Avill not grant the money of tlie peo})le unless there 
is a redress of grievances. 

These propositions were repeated with various degrees of vehemence 
\)j the majority in the House. 

The majority in the Senate and the minority on this floor expressed 
the deepest anxiety-to avoid an extra session and to avert the catastrophe 
thus threatened — the stoppage of the go\ernmeut. They ]ioiiited out 
the danger to the country and its business interests of an" extra session 
of Congress, and expressed their willingness to consent to any com- 
promise consistent with tlieir views of duty which should be ottered — 
not in the way of coercion but in the way of fair adjustiiuMit — and asked 
to be met in a si)irit of just accommodation on the other side. Unfortu- 
nately no spirit of adjustment was manifested in reply to their advances. 
And now the new Congress is ass('ml)led ; and afterteu days of caucus 
deliberation, the House of Kepresentatives has resolved, substantially, 
to reaffirm the positions of its predecessors, except that the suggestion 
of Senator Beck to otter the independent legislation in a separate bill 
has been abandoned. By a construction of the rules of the House far 
more violent than any heretofore given, a part of this independent legis- 
lation is placed on the pending bill for the su])port-of tlie Anny; and 
this House has determined to begin its career by the extremest form of 
coercive legislation. 

In my remarks to-day I shall confine myself almost exclusively to the 
one phase of the controversy presented iii this bill. 



Mr. Atkixs. Will the honorable gentleman allow me to interrupt him a moment? 

Mr. Garfield. With pleasure. 

Mr. Atkins. Do I understand you to state that in the conference committee no 
proposition was made other than the one suggested in the legislation proposed to be 
attached to the bill by the House conferees ? 

Mr. Garfield. I did not undertake to state what was done in con- 
ference except as reported by Senator Beck, for I was not a member of 
the committee. 

Mr. Atkixs. I thought you did. 

Mr. Garfield. No ; I only declared what was proposed on the floor 
of the House and Senate. 

Mt. Atkins. With the gentleman's permission I will state that the proposition the 
House made in conference committee was substantially the proposition now before the 
House and here offered to be attached to these bills. 

Mr. Garfield. I take it for granted that what my friend on the 
other side says is strictly true; but not even that proposition was re- 
l^orted to either House. 

The question, Mr. Chairman, may be asked, why make any special 
resistance to the clauses of legislation in this bill which a good many 
gentlemen on this side declared at the last session they cared but 
little about, and regarded as of very little practical importance, be- 
cause for years there had been no actual use for any part of these laws, 
and they had no expectation there would be any f It may be asked, 
why make any controversy on either side ? So far as we are concerned, 
Mr. Chairman, I desire to say this : we recognize the other side as 
accomplished parliamentarians and strategists, who have adopted with 
skill and adroitness their plan of assault. You have placed in the front, 
one of the least objectionable of your measiu^es ; but your whole i)ro- 
gramme has been announced, and we reply to your whole order of 
battle. The logic of your position compels us to meet you as promptly 
on the skirmish line as afterward when our entrenchments are assailed ; 
and, therefore, at the outset, we plant our case upon the general ground 
uj)on wliich we have chosen to defend it. 

THE VOLUNTARY POWERS OF THE GOVERNMENT. 

And here, sir, I wish to make a brief digression, in which I hope no 
gentleman will consider my discussion as controversial or personal. I 
had occasion, at a late hoiu' of the last Congress, to say something on 
what may. be called the voluntary element in our institutions. I spoke 
of the distribution of the powers of government. First, to the nation;- 
second, to the States ; and, third, the reservation of ijower to the people 
themselves. 

I called attention to the fact that under our form of government the 
most precious rights that men can possess on this earth are not dele- 
gated to the nation nor to the States, but are reserved to the third 
estate — the people themselves. I called attention to the interesting 
fact that lately the chancellor of the German Empire made the declara- 
tion that it was the chief object of the existence of the German Govern- 
ment to defend and maintain the religion of Jesus Christ — an object in 
reference to which our Congress is absolutely forbidden by the Consti- 
tution to legislate at all. Congress can establish no religion ; indeed, 
can make no law respecting it, because in the view of our fathers — the 
founders of our government — religion was too precious a right to intrust 
its interests by delegation to any government. Its maintenance was 
left to the voluntary action of the i)eople themselves. 



6 

In continuation of that thought, I wisli now to speak of the vohmtary 
element inside our government^a topic that I have not heard discussed, 
but one which aj)pears to me of vital importance in any comprehensive 
view of our institutions. 

Mr. Chairman, viewed frOra the stand-point of a foreigner, our govern- 
ment may be said to be the feeblest on the earth. From our stand-point, 
and with our experience, it is the mightiest. But why would a foreigner 
call it the feeblest ? He can point out a half dozen ways in which it 
can be destroyed without violence. Of course, all governments may be 
overturned by the sword ; but there are several ways in which ours 
may be annihilated without the tiring of a gun. 

For examjile, if the people of the United States should say we will 
elect no Representative to the House of Representatives — of course this 
is a violent supposition — but suppose they do not, is there any remedy '? 
Does our Constitution provide any remedy whatever ? In two years 
there would be no House of Representatives ; of course no support of 
the government, and no government. Suppose, again, the States should 
say, through their legislatures, we will elect no Senators. Such absten- 
tion alone would absolutely destroy this government ; and oiu* system 
provides no i)rocess of compulsion to prevent it. 

Again, suppose the two Houses were assembled in their usual order, 
and a majority of one in this body or in the Senate, should tirndy baud 
themselves together and say we will vote to adjourn the moment 
the hour of meeting arrives, and continue so to vote at every session 
during our two years of existence; the government would perish; 
and there is no provision of the Constitution to prevent it. Or, again 
if a majority of one in either body should declare that they would 
vote down, and did vote down, every bill to sui)i)ort the government by 
approi)riations, can you find in the whole range of our judicial or our 
executive authority hdj remedy whatever ? A Senator or a member of 
this House is free, and may vote "No" on every proposition. Nothing 
but his oath and his honor restrains him. Not so with executive and 
judicial officers. They have no power to destroy this governmant. Let 
them travel an inch beyond the line of the law, and they fall within the 
power of impeachment. But against the people who create Represent- 
atives, against the legislatures who create Senators, against Senators 
and Representatives in these Halls, there is no ])Ower of imi)eachment; 
there is no remedy, if by abstention or by adverse votes they refuse to 
support the government. 

At a first view, it would seem strange that a body of men so wise as 
our fathers were should have left a whole side of their fabric o])en to 
these deadly assaults ; but on a closer view of the case their wisdom will 
api)ear. What was their reliance ? This : the sovereign of this nation, 
the God-crowned and Heaven-anointed sovereign, in whom resides "the 
State's collected will," and to whom we all owe allegiance, is the people 
themselves. Inspired by love of country and by a deep sense of obliga- 
tion to perform every i)ublic duty, being themselves the creators of all 
the agencies and forces to execute their own will, and choosing from 
themselves their representatives to ex})ress that will in the forms of law, 
it would have been like a suggestion of suicide to assume that any of 
these great voluntary powers would be turned against the life of the 
government. Public opinion — that great ocean of thought from whose 
level all heights and all depths are measured — was trusted as a power 
amply able, and always willing, to guard all the ai>]>roaches on that side 
of the Constitution from any assault on the life of the nation. 

Up to this hour our sovereign has never failed us. There has never 



been siicli a refusal to exercise those primary functions of sovereignty 
as either to endanger or cripple the government; nor have the majority 
of the representatives of that sovereign in either House of Congress ever 
before announced their purpose to use their voluntary powers for its 
destruction. And now, for the first time in our history, and I will add 
for the first time for at least two centuries in the history of any English- 
speaking nation, it is suggested and threatened that these voluntary 
powers of Congress shall be used for the destruction of the government. 
I want it distinctly understood that the proposition which I read at the 
beginning of my remarks, and which is the programme announced to the 
American people to-day, is this : That if this House cannot have its own 
way in certain matters not connected with appropriations, it will so use, 
or refrain from using, its voluntary powers as to destroy the govern- 
ment. 

Now, Mr. Chau-man, it has been said on the other side, that when a 
demand for the redress of grievances is made, the authority that runs 
the risk of stopping and destroying the government is the one that re- 
sists the redress. Not so. If gentlemen will do me the honor to follow 
my thought for a moment more, I trust I will make this denial good. 

FREE CONSENT THE BASIS OF OUR LAWS. 

Our theory of law is free consent. That is the granite foundation of 
our whole superstructure. Nothing in this republic can be law without 
consent — the free consent of the House, the free consent of the Senate, 
the free consent of the Executive, or, if he refuse it, the fi'ee consent of 
two-thuxls of these bodies. Will any man deny that ? Will any man 
challenge a line of the statement that free consent is the foundation 
of all our institutions ? And yet the programme announced two weeks 
ago was that, if the Senate refused to consent to the demand of the House, 
the government should stop. And the proposition was then, and the 
programme is now, that, although there is not a Senate to be coerced, 
there is still a third independent branch in the legislative power of the 
government whose consent is to be coerced at the peril of the destruction 
of this government ; that is, if the President, in the discharge of his duty, 
shall exercise his plain Constitutional right to refuse his consent to this 
proposed legislation, the Congress will so use its voluntary powers as to 
"destroy the government. This is the proposition which we confront j 
and we denounce it as revolution. 

It makes no difference, Mr. Chairman, what the issue is. If it were 
the simplest and most inoffensive proposition in the world, yet if you 
demand, as a measure of coercion, that it shall be adopted against the 
free consent prescribed in the Constitution, every faii^-minded man in 
America is bound to resist you as much as though his own life depended 
upon his resistance. 

Let it be understood that I am not arguing the merits of any one of 
the three amendments. I am discussing the proposed method of legis- 
lation ; and I declare that it is against the Constitution of our country. 
It is revolutionary to the core, and is destructive of the fundamental 
principle of American liberty, the free consent of all the powers that 
unite to make laws. 

In opening this debate I challenge all comers to show a single instance 
in our history where this consent has been thus coerced. This is the 
great, the paramount issue which dwarfs all others into insignificance. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE LAW SOUaHT TO BE MODLFIED. 

I now turn aside, for a moment, from the line of my arj^iment to say 
that it is not a little surprising that our friends on the other side shoukl 
have gone into this great contest on so weak a cause as the one embraced 
in the pending amendment to this bill. 

Victor Hugo said, in his description of the battle of Waterloo, that the 
struggle of the two armies was like the wrestling of two giants, when 
a chip under the heel of one might determine the victory. It may be 
that this amendment is the chip under your heel, or it may be that it is 
the chip on our shoulder. As a chip, it is of small account to you or to 
us ; but when it represents the integrity of the Constitution and is as- 
sailed by revolution, we light for it as for a Kohinoor of i^iu'est water. 
[Api)lausc.] 

The distinguished and venerable gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Ste- 
phens] spoke of this law, which is sought to be repealed, as "odious and 
dangerous." It has been denounced as a piece of i)artisan war legisla- 
tion to enable the Army to control elections. 

Do gentlemen know its history? Do they know whereof they affirm? 
Who made this law which is denounced as so great an oft'ense as to jus- 
tify the destruction of the government rather than let it remain on the 
statute-book'? Its first draft was introduced into the Senate by a promi- 
nent Democrat from the State of Kentucky, Mr. Powell, who made an 
able speech in its favor. It was reported against by a Kepublican com- 
mittee of that body, whose printed report I hold in my hand. It en- 
countered weeks of debate, was amended and passed, and then came 
into the House. Every Democrat present in the Senate voted for it on 
its final passage. Every Senator who voted against it was a Eepublican, 
Xo Democrat voted against it. Who were the Democrats that voted for 
it! Let me read some of the names: Hendricks, of Indiana; Davis, of 
Kentucky; Johnson, of Maryland; McDougall, of California; Powell, 
of Kentucky; Richardson, of Illinois, and Saulsbury, of Delaware. 

Of Republican Senators thirteen voted against it ; only ten voted for it. 

The bill then came to the House of Representatives and was put upon 
its passage here. How did the vote stand in this body? Every Demo- 
crat present at the time in the House of Representatives of the Thirty- 
eighth Congress, voted for it. The total vote in its favor in the House 
was 113; and of these 58 were Democrats. And who were they ? The 
magnates of the party. The distinguished Speaker of this House, Mr. 
Samuel J. Randall, voted for it. The distinguished chairman of the 
Committee of Ways and Means of the last House, Mr. Eernando AVood, 
voted for it. The distinguished member from my own State who now 
holds a seat in the other end of the Capitol, Mr. George H. Pendleton, 
voted for it. Messrs. Cox and Cottroth, Kernan and Morrison, who are 
still in Congress, voted for it. Every Democrat of consjiicuous name 
and fame in that House voted for the bill, and not one against it. There 
were but few Republicans who voted against it. I was one of the few. 
Thaddeus Stevens and Judge Kelley voted against it. 

What was the controversy? Wliat was the object of the bill? It 
was alleged by Democrats that in those days of war there were inter- 
ferences with the proper freedom of elections in the border States. We 
denied the charge ; but lest there might be some infraction of the free- 
dom of elections, many Republicans, unwilling that there should be even 
the semblance of interference witli that freedom, voted for it. This law 
is an expression of their purpose that the Army shoukl not be used at 
any election, except for the purpose of keeping the peace. 



9 

Those Eepublicaus wlio voted against it did so on the groiiud that there 
was no cause for such legislation ; that it was a slander ujion the gov- 
ernment and the Army to say that they were interfering with the proper 
freedom of elections. I was among that number 

Mr. Carlisle. Will the gentleman allow me to ask him a question ? 

Mr. Garfield. Certainly 

Mr. Carlisle. I ask if the Democrats in the Senate and House of Representatives 
did not vote for that proposition because it came in the form of a substitute for another 
proposition that was still more objectionable? 

Mr. Garfield. The gentleman is quite mistaken. The original bill 
was introduced by a gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Powell; it was 
amended in its course through the Senate ; but the votes to which I have 
referred were the final votes on its passage after all the amendments had 
been made ; and, what was more, a Republican Senator moved to recon- 
sider it, hoping that he might thereby kill it. And after several days' 
delay and debate it was again passed, every Democrat again voting for 
it. In the House there was no debate, and therefore no expression of 
the reasons why anybody voted for it. Each man voted according to his 
convictions, I supjiose. 

Mr. Stephexs. Will the gentleman yield to me ? 

Mr. Garfield. I yield to the venerable gentleman from Georgia for 
a question. 

Mr. Stephens. I simply ask if the country is likely to be revolutionized and the gov- 
ernment destroyed by the repealing a law that the gentleman himself voted against ? 
[Laughter on the Democratic side.] 

Mr. Garfield. I think not. That is not the element of revolution, 
as I will show the gentleman. The proposition now is, that after four- 
teen years have passed, and not one petition from one American citizen 
has come to us asking that this law be repealed, while not one memorial 
has found its way to our desks complaining of the law, so far as I have 
heard, the Democratic Eepresentatives declare that if they are not per- 
mitted to force upon another house and upon the Executive, against 
their consent, the repeal of a law that Democrats made, this refusal will 
be considered a suflicient ground for starving this government to death. 
That is the proposition which we denounce as revolution. [Applause 
on the Eepublican side.] 

Mr. Fern.v^'do Wood. I desire to ask the gentleman from Ohio a question. 

Mr. Garfield. Certainly. 

Mr. Ferxado Wood. Before he leaves that part of his remarks to which the gentle- 
man from Keutucky [Mr. Carlisle] has referred, I desire to ask the gentleman whether 
he wishes to make the impression upon the House that the bill introduced by Senator 
Powell, of Kentucky, and which resulted finally in the law of 1865, was the bill that 
passed the Senate, that passed the House, and for which he says the present Si^eaker 
of this House and myself voted ? 

Mr. Garfield. I have not intimated that there were no amendments. 
On the contrary I have said that it was amended in the Senate. One 
amendment permitted the use of the Army to repel armed enemies of the 
United States from the polls. 

Mr. Fernando Wood. So far as I am personally concerned, I deny that I ever voted 
for a bill except as a substitute for a more pernicious and objectionable measuie. 
[Much laughter on the Republican side.] 

Mr. Garfield. What I have said is a matter of record. And I say 
again the gentleman voted for this law; and every Democrat in the Sen- 
ate and in the House who voted at all, voted for this law just as it now 
stands ; and without their votes it could not have passed. ISTo amend- 
ments whatever were oftered in the House, and there was no other bill 
on the subject before the House. 



10 

Mr. Fkrnando Wood. I desire to submit another question to my triend, 

Mr. Garfield. Oertaiuly. 

Mr. Fernando Wood. It is whether, in 18fi.''), at the time of the passage of this law, 
Avheu the war had not really subsifled, whether there was not in a portion of this 
country a condition of things rendering it almost impossible to exercise the elective 
franchise nnless there was some degree of military interference? [Great laughter. ] 
And furtlier, whether, after the experience of fourteen years since the war has sub- 
sided, that gentleman is yet prepared to continue a war measure in a time of x)rofound 
peace in this country? 

Mr. Garfield. No tloiibt tlie patriotic gentleman from New York 
[Mr. Fernando Wood] took all tlie.se things into consideration when he 
A'Oted for tliis law; and I may have been nnpatriotic in voting against 
it at that time; hut he and I must stand by our records, as they were 
made. 

THE NEW REBELLION. 

Let it be understood that I am not discussing the merits of this law. 
I have merely turned aside from the line of my argument to show the 
inconsistency of the other side in proposing to stop the government if 
they cannot force tlie repeal of a law which they themselves made. I am 
discussing a method of revolution against the Constitution now ju'oposed 
by this House, and to that issue 1 hold gentlemen in this debate, and 
challenge them to reply. 

And now, Mr. Chairman, I ask the forbearance of gentlemen on the 
other side while I offer a suggestion, which I make with reluctance. 
They will bear me witness that I have, in many ways, shown my desire 
that the wounds of the war should be healed; that the grass which has 
grown green over the graves of the dead of both armies might symbol- 
ize the returning spring of friendship and peace between citizens who 
were lately in arms against each other. 

But I am compelled, by the conduct of the other side, to refer to a chap- 
ter of cur recent history. The last act of Democratic domination in this 
Capitol, eighteen years ago, was striking and drauuitic, perhaps heroic. 
Then the Democratic party said to the Eepublicans, "If you elect the 
man of your choice as President of the United States we will shoot your 
government to death''; but the peojde of this country, refusing to be 
coerced by threats or violence, voted as they pleased, and lawfidly elected 
Abraham Lincoln as President of the L" nited States. 

Then your leaders, though holding a majority in the other branch of 
Congress, were heroic enough to withdraw from their seats and fling 
down the gage of mortal battle. We called it rebellion; but we recog-^ 
nized it as courageous and manly to avow your pur])ose, take all the 
risks, and fight it out in the open field. Notwithstanding your utmost 
efforts to destroy it, the government was saved. Year by year, since the 
war ended, those who resisted you have come to believe that you have 
finally renounced your jmrpose to destroy, and are willing to maintain 
the governimiut. In that belief you have been i)ermitted to return to 
power in the two Houses. 

To-day, after eighteen years of defeat, the book of your domination 
is again opened, and your first act awakens every unhappy memory, 
and threatens to destroy the confidence which- your professions of 
patriotism inspired. You turned down a leaf of the history that re- 
corded your last act of power in 1801, and you have now signalized 
your return to power by beginning a second chapter at the same page, 
not this time by a heroic act that declares war on the battle-field, but 
you say, if all the legislative powers of the government do not con- 
sent to let you tear certain laws out of the statute-book, you. will not 



11 

shoot our government to death as you tried to do in the first chapter, 
but you declare that if we do not consent against our will, if you 
cannot coerce an independent branch of this government, against its 
will, to allow you to tear from the statute-books some laws put there 
by the will of the people, you will starve the government to death. 
[Great applause on the Kepublican side.] 

Between death on the field and death by starvation, I do not know 
that the American people will see any gi^eat difference. The end, if 
successfully reached, would be death in either case. Gentlemen, you 
have it in your power to kill this government ; you have it in your 
power, by withholding these two bills, to smite the nerve-centers of 
our Constitution with the paralysis of death ; and you have declared 
your purpose to do this, if you cannot break down that fundamental 
principle of free consent which, up to this, hour has always ruled in the 
legislation of this government. 

Mr. Dav^is, of North Carolina. Will the gentlemau allow me to ask him a question? 

Mr. Garfield. Certainly. 

Mr. Davis, of North Carolina. Do I luiderstaud the fientleman to say that the 
refusal to permit the Army at the polls will be the death of this government? [De- 
risive cries of "Oh ! " " Oh! " on the Republican side. ] That is the logic of the gentle- 
man's argument, if it means anything. But we say that it will be the preservation 
of this government to keep the military power from destroying liberty at the poUs. 

Mr. Garfield. I have too much respect for the intellect of the gen- 
tleman from North Carolina to believe that he thinks that is my argu- 
ment. He does not say he thinks so. On the contrary, I am sure that 
every clear-minded man on this floor knows that such is not my argument. 
The position on the other side is simply this : that unless some inde- 
pendent branch of the legislative power of this government is forced 
against its will to vote for or to approve what it does not freely consent 
to, you will use the voluntary power in your hands to starve the govern- 
ment to death. 

Mr. Davis, of North Carolina. Will the gentleman permit me to ask him another 
question ? Do I understand him to assume that we are forcing some branch of the 
government to do what it does not wish to do? How do we know that, or how does 
the gentleman know it? Does the gentleman, when he speaks of "the government," 
mean to say that it is not the government of the majority, or does he assume that the 
majority is on his side? 

Mr. Garfield. I am perfectly protected against the suggestion of 
the gentleman. I read in the outset declarations of leading members 
of his party in both branches of Congress asserting this in'ogramme 
and declaring the intention of carrying it through to the end, in spite 
of the Senate and in spite of an Executive veto, which they anticipate. 
The method here proposed iuvites, possibly compels, a veto. 

COERCION OF THE PRESIDENT. 

Touching this question of executive action, I remind the gentleman 
that in 1856 the national Democratic convention, in session at Cincinnati, 
and still later, the national Democratic convention of 1800, affirmed the 
right of the veto as one of the sacred rights guaranteed by oui- govern- 
ment. Here is the resolution : 

That we are decidedly opposed to taking from the President the qualified veto power 
by which he is enabled, under restrictions and responsibilities amply sufficitnt to 
guard the public interests, to suspend the passage of a bill whose merits cannot secure 
the approval of two-thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives until the judg- 
ment of the people can be obtained thereon. 



12 

The doctriue is that any measure which canuot be passed over a veto 
by a two-thirds vote has no right to become a law, and the only mode of 
redress is an appeal to the people at the next election. That has been 
the Democratic doctriue Irom the earliest days, notably so from Jack- 
son's time until now. 

In leaving this topic, let me ask what would you have said if, in 1861, 
the Democratic members of the Senate, being then a majority of that 
body, instead of taking the heroic course and going out to battle, had 
simply said, "We will put on an appropriation bill an amendment de- 
claring the right of any State to secede from the Union at pleasure, and 
forbidding the President or any officer of the Army or Navy of the 
United States from interfering with any State in its work of secession ? " 
Suppose they had said to the President, '' Unless you consent to the in- 
corporation of this provision in an appropriation bill we will refuse sup- 
plies to the government." Perhaps they could then have killed the 
government by starvation ; but even in the madness of that hour the 
leaders of rebellion did not think it worthy their manhood to put their 
fight on that dishonorable ground. They planted themselves on the 
higher plane of battle and fought it out to defeat. 

Now, by a method which the wildest secessionist scorned to adopt, it 
is proposed to make this new assault ui)on the life of the republic. 

Gentlemen, we have calmly surveyed this neAv field of conflict; we 
have tried to count the cost of the struggle, as we did that of 1801 before 
we took up your gage of battle. Though no human foresight could fore- 
cast the awful loss of blood and treasure, yet in the name of liberty and 
union we accepted the issue and fought it out to the end. We made the 
appeal to our august sovereign, to the omnipotent public opinion of 
America, to determine whether the Union should perish at your hands. 
You know the result. And now lawfully, in the exercise of our right as 
Eepreseutatives, we take up the gage you have this day thrown down, 
and appeal again to our common sovereign to determine whether you 
shall be permitted to destroy the principle of free consent in legislation 
under the threat of starving the government to death. 

We are ready to pass these bills for the support of the go^ eminent 
at any hour when you will ofier them in the ordinary way, by the methods 
prescribed by the Constitution. If you offer those' other propositions of 
legislation as separate measures we wiU meet you in the fraternal spirit 
of fair debate and will discuss theu* merits. Some of your measui"es 
many of us will vote for in separate bills. But you shallnot coerce any 
independent branch of this government, even by the threat of starva- 
tion, to consent to surrender its lawful powers until the question has 
been appealed to the sovereign and decided in your favor. On this 
ground we plant ourselves, and here we mil stand to the end. 

PROTECTION OF THE NATIONAL BALLOT-BOX REFUSED. 

Let it be remembered that the avowed object of this new revolution 
is to destroy all the defenses which the nation has placed around its 
baUot-box to guard the fountain of its own life. You say that the United 
States shall not employ even its civil power to keep peace at the polls. 
You say that the marshals shall liave no power either to arrest rioters 
or criminals who seek to destroy the freedom and purity of the ballot- 
box. 

I remind you that you have not always shown this great zeal in keep- 
ing the civil officers of the general government out of the States. Only 
six years before the war, your law authorized marshals of the United 



13 

States to enter all our hamlets and households to hunt for fugitive slaves. 
Not only that, it empowered the marshals to summon the 2)osse comitatus, 
to command aU bystanders to join in the chase and aid in remanding to 
eternal bondage the fleeing slave. And your Democratic Attorney- 
General, in his opinion published in 1854, declared that the marshal of 
the United States might summon to his aid the whole able-bodied force 
of his precinct, all bystanders, including not only the citizens gener- 
ally, " but any and all organized armed forces, whether militia of the 
State, or officers, soldiers, sailors, and marines of the United States," to 
join in the chase and hunt down the fugitive. Now, gentlemen, if, for 
the piu'pose of making eternal slavery the lot of an American, you could 
send your marshals, summon your posse, and use the armed force of the 
United States, with what face or grace can you tell us that this govern- 
ment cannot lawfully employ the same marshals with their armed posse of 
citizens, to maintain the purity of oiu- own elections and keep the peace 
at our own polls. You have made the issue and we have accepted it. 
In the name of the Constitution and on behalf of good government and 
public justice, wx make the appeal to our common sovereign. 

For the x^resent I refrain from discussing the merits of the election 
laws. I have sought only to state the first fundamental ground of our 
opposition to this revolutionary method of legislation by coercion. 
[Great applause.] 

Mr. Sparks. Before the ffeutlenian from Ohio takes his seat I hope he will give to 
the House the name of the Attoruey-General of the Uuited States to whom he re- 
ferred. 

Mr. Garfield. I refer to Caleb Gushing, the Democratic Attorney- 
General of President Pierce. 



2. CLOSE OF DEBATE ON FIRST ARMY BILL. 

At the conclusion of the general debate on the sixth section of the Army appropria- 
tion bill, Friday, April 4, 1879, Mr. Garfield said : 

Mr. Chairman : During the last four days, some fifteen or twenty 
gentlemen have paid their special attention to the argument I made last 
Satiu-day, and have announced its complete demolition. Now that the 
general debate has closed, I will notice the principal points of attack by 
which this work of destruction has been accomplished. 

In the first place, every man, save one, who has replied to me, has 
alleged that I held it was revolutionary to place tliis general legislation 
upon an appropriation bill. One gentleman went so far as to fill a page 
of the Record with citations from the Congressional Globe and the 
Congressional Record to show that for many years riders had been 
placed upon appropriation bills. If gentlemen find any pleasure in 
setting up a man of straw and knocking it down again, they have en- 
joyed themselves. 

I never claimed that it was either revolutionary or unconstitutional 
for this House to put a rider on an appropriation bill. No man on this 
side of the House has claimed that. The most that has been said is 
that it is considered a bad jiarliamentary practice ; and all parties in 
this country have said that repeatedly. 

The gentleman fioin Kentucky [Mr. Blackburn] evidently thought 
he was making a telling point against me when he cited the fact that, in 
1872, I insisted upon the adoption of a conference report on an approri- 
ation bill that had a rider on it; and he alleged that I said it was revo- 



14 

liitionary for his party to resist it. Let me refresh his memory. I said 
then and I say now tliat it was revohitionary for tlie minority party to 
refuse to let the appropriation bill be voted on. For fonr days they said 
we shonld not vote at all on the snndry civil appropriation bill because 
there was a rider on it, put there not by the House but by the Senate. 

I was sorry the rider was put on, and moved to non-concur in the 
amendments when they came to the House. But when the minority on 
this floor said that we should not act on the bill at all, because the rider 
was put upon it, I said and now say it was unjustifiable parliamentary 
obstruction. We do not filibuster. We do not struggle to prevent a 
vote on this bill. I will be loyal to the House of which I am a member, 
and maintain now, as I did then, the right of the majority to bring an 
appropriation bill to a vote. * 

You ha-s^e a right — however unwise and indecent it may be as a matter 
of parliamentary practice — you have a perfect right to put this rider on 
this bill and pass it. When you send it to the Senate, that body has a 
]>orfect right to pass it. It is your constitutional right and theirs to pass 
it; for the free consent of each bodj^ is the basis of the law-making 
power. 

When it goes to the President of the United States, it is his constitu- 
tional right to approve it ; and if he does, it will then be a law, which 
you and I nnist obey. But it is equally his constitutional riglit to dis- 
approve it ; and should he do so, then, gentlemen, unless two-thirds of 
this body and two-thirds of the Senate pass it, notwithstanding the ob- 
jections of the President, it is not only not your right to make it a law, 
but it will be the flattest violation of the Constitution, the sheerest 
usurpation of power to attemiit to make it a law in any other way. 
Without these conditions you cannot make it a law. 

AYhat, then, is the proposition you have ofl'ered ! You say that there 
are certain odious laws that you want to take olf the statute-book. I 
say repeal them, if you can do so constitutionally. But you declare that 
you will compel consent to your will by refusing the necessary support — 
not to the President, not to any man — but to the government itself. 
This proposition I denounce as revolution, and no man has resi)onded to 
the charge either by argument or denial. 

No member on this side brought the question into this chamber. The 
issue was not raised by us. Who brought it here ? The proclamation 
of yoiu" caucus, the declaration of your conference committees. They 
announced it in the last House as their programme. They said you 
would combine these measures of legislation together and send them to 
the President in a separate bill, and if he did not aj^prove them j^ou 
would never vote the su])i)lies for the government. 

You threatened the President in advance before you allowed him an 
opportunity to say yes or no. You entered this Hall fnlminating threats 
against him in a high-sounding proclamation. You " thundered in the 
index." It remains to be seen whether, in the body of your work, and 
in its concluding i)aragrai)hs, your thunder will be as terrible as it was 
in the opening chapter. By adopting the programme of tlie last House 
you have made it yonr own ; but you have put the measures in their 
most oft'ensive form by tacking them all to the two great appropriation 
bills. 

Another equally groundless charge against me and my associates, is 
that we have threatened your bills with an executive veto. I repel the 
charge as wholly untrue in fact. I said nothing that can be tortured 
into such a threat. It would i)e indecent on my part ; it would be inde- 
cent for any of us even to speak of what the executive intends to do ; 



15 

for none of us have the right to know. But you, in advance, proclaimed 
to the country and to him that if he dares to exercise his constitutional 
right of refusing his consent, you will refuse to vote the sujiplies for the 
government; in other words, you will starve it to death. That is the 
proposition we have debated. 

My distinguished friend from Virginia [Mr. Tucker], who has come 
nearer meeting this case with argument than any other man on that 
side, has made a point which I respect as an evidence of the gallantry 
of liis intellect. He says that under our Constitution we can vote sup- 
plies to the Army but for two years ; that we may impose conditions upon 
our supplies, and if these be refused the Army ceases to exist after the 
30th of June next. In short, that the annual Army bill is the act of 
reconstituting the Army. He is mistaken in one vital point. The Army 
is an organization created by general laws; and so far as the creation of 
officers and grades is concerned, it is independent of the appropriation 
bills. The supplies, of course, come through appropriation bills. I grant 
that that if supplies are refused to the Array, it must perish of inanition. 
It becomes a skeleton; but its anatomy was created by general law, and 
it would remain a skeleton, your monument of starvation. The gentle- 
man from Virginia says, " Unless you let us append a condition which 
we regard a redress of grievances, we will let the Army be annihilated 
on the 30th day of next June, by withholding supplies."- That is legiti- 
mate argument ; that is a frank declaration of your policy. Let us ex- 
amine the proposition. What is the "grievance" of which the gentle- 
man complains? He uses the word "grievance" in the old English 
sense, as though the King were thrusting himself in the way of the 
nation by making a war contrary to the nation's wish. But his "griev- 
ance" is a law of the land — a law made by the representatives of the 
people — by all the forms of consent known to the Constitution. It is 
his "grievance" that he cannot get rid of this law by the ordinary and 
Constitutional method of repeal. [Applause.] When he can get rid of 
any law by the union of all consents required to make or unmake 
a law, he gets rid of it la^-fully, whether it be a gTievance or a 
blessing. But his method is first to call a law a "grievance," and then 
try to get rid of it in defiance of the processes which the Constitution 
prescribes for the law-making power of the nation. I denounce his 
method as unconstitutional and revolutionary, and one that will result 
in far greater e\il than that of which he complains. 

If he goes to the American people with the proposition to annihilate 
our Army on the 30th day of June next, unless the President, contrary 
to his conscience, contrary to his sense of duty, shall sign whatever 
Congress may send him 

[Here the hammer fell.] * 

Mr. Keifer obtained the floor, and yielded his time to Mr. Garfield. 

Mr. Garfeeld. T say, if the gentleman from Virginia puts that propo- 
sition before the Ainerican i)eople, we wiU debate it in the forum of every 
jiatriotic heart and will abide the result. If the party which, after 
eighteen years' banishment fi'om i)ower, has come back, as tlie gentleman 
from Kentucky |Mr. Blackburn] said yesterday, to its "birthright of 
power," or "heritage," as it is recorded in the Eecord of this morning, 
is to signalize its return by striking down the gallant and faithful Army 
of the "United States, the people" of this country will not be slow to 
understand that there are reminiscences of that Army which these gentle- 
men would willingly forget, by burying both the Army and the memo- 
ries of its great service to the Union in one grave. [Applause.] 



16 

We do not seek to revive the imliappy memories of the war ; but we 
are unwilling to see the Army perish at the hands of Congress, even if 
its continued existence should occasionally awaken the memory of its 
former glories. 

Now, let it be understood once for all, that we do not deny, we have 
never denied your right to make such rules for this House as you please. 
Under those rules, as you make or construe them, you may put all your 
legislation upon these bills as "riders." But we say that, whatever your 
rules may be, you must make or repeal a law in accordance with the 
Constitution, by the triple consent to which I referred the other day, or 
you must do it by "\dolence. 

Now, as my friend from Connecticut [Mr. Hawley] well said, if you 
can elect a President and a Congress in 1880, you have only to wait two 
years, and you have the three consents. You can then, without revolu- 
tion, tear down this statute and all the rest. You can follow out the 
programme which some of your members have suggested, and tear out 
one by one the records of the last eighteen years. Some of them are 
glorious with the unquenchable light of liberty ; some of them stand as 
the noblest troi)hies of freedom. With full power in your hands, you 
can destroy them. But we ask you to restrain your rage against them 
until you have the lawful power to smite them down. 

My fiiend from Yu-ginia, whom I know to be a master and lover of 
mathematics, has formulated his argument into an equation: "Eight 
equals duty plus power." Now, I say to the gentleman that his sense 
of duty resides in his own breast ; but power, the other factor of the 
second member of his equation, must be found, not in his conciousness, 
but in the Constitution of the United States. His notions of duty lead 
him to tear down the laws which the Eepublic enacted to protect the 
purity of national elections and to use such force as may be necessary to 
keep the peace while the national voice is finding expression at the polls. 
That, I say, is his notion of duty, of which he is sole arbiter ; but when 
he comes to su])eradd power, in order to complete his "right" as a legis- 
lator, I hope he will not evoke that i)0wer out of his conciousness, but 
will seek for it in the great charter, the Constitution of the United States. 
According to his own algebra, he must have both these elements be- 
fore he can claim the " right" to overturn these laws which he denounces 
as grievances. 

Now, Mr. Chairman, let me add a word in conclusion, lest I may be 
misunderstood. I said last session, and I have said since, that if you 
want this whole statute concerning the use of the Army at the polls torn 
from your books, I will help you to do it. If you will offer a naked 
proposition to repeal those two sections of the Eevised Statutes named 
in the sixth section of this bill, I will vote with you. But you do not 
ask a repeal of those sections. Why "? They impose restrictions upon 
the use of the Aimy, limiting its functions and ])unishing its oflticers for 
any infraction of these limitations ; but you seek to strike out a negative 
clause, thereby making new and aflirmative legislation of the most sweep- 
ing and dangerous character. 

Your pro])osed modification of the law affects not the Army alone, 
but the whole civil i)ower of the United States. " Civil officers " are 
included in these sections ; and if the proi>osed amendment l)e adopted, 
you deny, to every civil officer of the United States, any power whatever 
to summon the armed posse to help him enforce the j^rocesses of the law. 
If you i)ass the section in that form, you impose restrictions upon the 
civil authorities of the United States never before proi)osed in any Con- 
gress by any legislator since this government began. I say, therefore, 



17 

in the shape you propose this, it is much the worst of all your " riders." 
In the be,2:inniug of this contest we understood that you desired only to 
ji'et the Army away from tlie polls. As that Avould still leave the civil 
officers full power to keep the ]ieace at the polls, I thought it was the 
least important and the least dangerous of your demands ; but as you 
have put it here, it is tlie most dangerous. If you re-enact it in the shape 
presented, it becomes a later law than the supervisors and marshals law, 
and 2)ro tanto repeals the latter. As it stands now in the statute-book, 
it is the earlier statute, and is j;ro tanto itself repealed by the marshals 
law of 1S71, and is therefore harmless so far as it relates to civil officers. 
But if you put it in here, you deny the power of the marshals of the 
U'nited States to perform their duties whenever a riot may require the 
use of an armed i)osse. 

The gentleman from Maryland [My. McLane] said, the other day, there 
was nothing in the Constitution which empowered any officer of the 
United States to keep the peace in the States. A single sentence, Mr. 
Chairman, before your hammer falls. I ask that gentleman to tell us 
wliether the United States has no power to keep the peace in the 
great post-office in Baltimore City, so that the postmaster may attend 
to his duties ; whether we have not the power to keep the peace along 
the line of every railroad that carries our mails, or where any post- 
rider of the "star vservice" carries tlie mail on his saddle; whether we 
have not the right, if need be, to line the post-road with troojis, and 
to bring the guns of the Xavy to bear to protect any custom-house or 
light-house of the United States ! And yet, if the gentleinan's theory 
be corre(;t, we cannot enforce a single civil process of this government 
by the aid of an armed posse without making it a i^enitentiary offense 
on the i)art of the o Ulcer who does it. [Applause on the Kej)ublican 
side.l 



3. LEGISLATIVE APPKOPKIATION BILL. 

NATIONAL ELECTIONS SHOULD BE PROTECTED BY NATIONAL AU- 
THORITY. 

The House, being in Coniniittee of tlic Whole on the state of the Union, and having 
under consideration the legislative appropriation bill, on the 26th of April, 1879 — 

Mr. Garfield said : Mr. Chairman, I move as an amendment to the 
pending bill to strike out lines 2000 to 20G4 inclusive, commencing with 
the pro\'iso. 

I had intended to speak somewhat elaborately uj^on this bill, but I 
have preferred to give way for the sake of allowing those who had not 
spoken an opportunity to be heard. 

I would not rise now to ask the attention of the House at all but for 
the sake of correcting a few plain misapprehensions and evasions in this 
debate. The gentleman who has just taken his seat, [Mr. Ewing] has 
said that I have led in an attemi)t to raise sectional feeling in the JS'orth 
against the patriotic people of the South. It is the old and absurd cry 
of a sectional Korth and a national South ; that is, the thirty million 
people of the JSTorth, and their Eepresentatives, of whom he is one, are 
sectional, passionate, unkind ; and the fifteen million of " national- 
minded and patriotic" people of the South are suffering from the narrow 
and unjust sectionalism of the thirty million among whom my colleague 
and I live! 
2g 



18 

The gentleman reminds me of wliat he was pleased to call a patriotic 
sentiment of mine, uttered at the last session of Congress, when I said 
what I am glad to have remembered, that in my judgment the man or 
]tolitic;d party who souglit to raise sectional issues and revive the un- 
1.. ippy passions that ouglit to sleep in the graves of our dead on both 
sides was not patriotic, nor would he find an echo to his sentiments in 
the hearts of the best people of this ciountry. 1 said that deliberately, 
with all the meaning that the words import. 

The blin<lness that leads my colleague to call two-thirds of this nation 
sectional, also leads him to think my denunciation of those who reawaken 
old sectional strife can apply only to Republicans. Let him not forget the 
origin of the present controversy. Who raised this unhappy issue ? Did 
"any Republican begin it ? Was it not brought here by the predetermined 
caucus action of the Democractic party ? Was it not embodied in the 
deelaration of your Senators and mend)ers that if you could not force 
certain acts of legislation upon the statute-book you would never grant 
supi)lies for the support of the government f That was the party and 
that was the act which raised this controversy, involving an issue never 
raised before in this nation ; and, because we meet it and denounce it, 
you declare that those who stand by orderly and constitutional methods 
are sectioiml, and you who make tlie innovation are national ! 

Gentlemen, I took upon myself a very grave responsibility in the 
opening of this debate when I quoted the declarations of leading mem- 
bers on' the other side and said that the programme was revolution and, 
if not abandoned, would result in the destruction of this government. I 
declared that you had entered upon a scheme which if persisted in would 
starve the government to death. I say that 1 took a great risk when I 
made this charge against you as a party. I put myself in your power, 
gentlemen. If I had misconceived your purposes and misrepresented 
your motives, it Avas in your power to prove me a false accuser. It was in 
your power to ruin me in the estimation of fair-minded, patriotic men, 
by the utterance of one sentence. The hmnblest or the greatest of 
you could have overwhelmed me with shame and confusion in one short 
sentence. You could Ivdve said, " We wish to pass our measures of legis- 
lation in reference to elections, juries, and the use of the Army; and we 
will if we can do so constitutionally ; but if we cannot get these measures 
in accordance with tlie Constitution, we will pass the appropriation bills 
like loyal Eepresentatives ; and then go home and appeal to the people." 

If any man, speaking for the majority, had made that declaration, 
uttered that sentence, he would have ruined me in the estimation of fair- 
minded men, and set me down as a false accuser and slanderer. Forty- 
live of you have spoken. Forty -live of you have deluged the ear of this 
country with delxite; but that sentence has not been spoken by any 
one ofyou. On the contrary, l)y your silence, as well as by your affir- 
mation, you have imule my accusation overwhelmingly true. 

And there I leave that" controversy. The assaults upon my speecli 
have been, from the beginning to the end, evasions of the issue. What 
have you said! Kot less than thirty of you, in si)ite of my plain and 
emphatic declarations to the contrary, have insisted that I said it was 
revolutionary to put a rider on an appropriation bill, a thing that no 
man on this side of the House has said. You were guilty, gentlemen, 
and in this I include the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Kelley], of 
what Sidney Smith once called ^' an indecent exposure of your intellects." 

Mr. Kkllky. Did I misiindorstancl you wlion I said that your spoecli wliicli lay befoie 
ine had the tith> of " Kovohition in Congress," and said if the geutlemau believed that 
doctrine now he had underiioue a mental revolution / 



19 

Mr. G.vr.FiELD. Tlie .2:entlemaii slioiikl not confine his reading to the 
title. If he had read my speecli as \vell as its title, he wonld have read 
that in 1872, in the debate to wlucli he referred, the Democratic party on 
this floor said we shonld not consider an approi)riation hill at all. I said 
to thein, " Yon have a right to vote against it; yon have a right to filibus- 
ter to get a chance to speak on it if need bs; but when you say that the 
majority shall not act on an appropriation bill at all, because there is a 
rider on it, that is parliamentary revolution"; and so I say to-day, and 
the gentleman quoted that as tliougli it were inconsistent with my present 
jiosition, which is as that of 1871*, that to refuse to act on the appropria- 
tions is revolutioimry. In 1872 the Democracy said the appropriation bi 11 
should not be acted on at all because a rider was on it. ISTow they say 
the appropriation bills shall not be acted upon at all unless there are 
"riders" on them. I resisted their position then, and I resist it now. 

There is another point which I must touch to show the evasions which 
have been resorted to in this debate. The other side seeks to go before 
tlie country on ]ik'as like this which stands as the heading of the speech 
of the distinguished gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Tucker J: "Elections 
by the people must be free from tlie ])ower and presence of the standing 
Army." They seek to make the people believe that Democrats in Con- 
gress are struggling to get the bayonets away from the breasts of the 
voters, and that Ave are striving to keep the Army at the polls. The 
Democratic press is everywhere stating the issue in this way, that the 
Kepublicans are defending an odious law, enacted amid the passions of 
the war, to authorize the use of the Army at State elections. 

ISTow, " mark how plain a tale shall put that down." On this side, 
this proposition was made: If you find fault with tha law of 18G5 we 
will help you repeal it altogether. On the motion of the distinguished 
gentleman from IVlichigan, [Mr. Conger] every liepublican on this floO'r 
who voted at all, when the Army bill was here, voted to repeal in toto 
the law of 18G5, which you complained of to the people as putting the 
bayonets at the breasts of the voters ; and every Democrat, who sits 
here and voted at all, voted "Xo." You would not rejieal the law, but 
you told the people we were trying to keep it on the statute-books, and 
yon were trying to get it off. 

Now, Mr. Chairjnan, our vote on that subject has put us beyond all 
cavil on this high aud unassailal»le ground. We are willing and we 
have voted to repeal the whole of that law, and we even went so far as 
to put that repeal on the Army bill, and you voted against it. Now, 
never again go to the people and say you tried to repeal the odious law 
of 1865 and the Eepublicans would not let you. 

My colleague [Mr. Ewing], who has just taken his seat, says that the 
sections sought to be repealed by the bill now before us, authorize 
unwarrantable and unconstitutional interference with elections in the 
States. He says that the supervisors and marshals are intruders at the 
election of Congressmen ; that they have no constitutional right to be 
there, even as witnesses. Gentlemen, I never believed in State rights 
to the extent you did and do ; but there is one thing concerning whijh 
I have always thought that the States came very near beina' sovereign. 
I suppose that all our States claim the right to have a legislature of two 
hous( s, each house wifh a right to make its own rules, sit in its own 
separate chamber, pass measures according to its own rules, ancl regu- 
late the conduct of its own clerks. Y'et, gentlemen, if you will read 
from sections 14 to 19 of the Ee vised Statutes, you will find that the 
following has been done : The supreme power of the United States, by 
force of national law, has gone into the legislature of every State in 



20 

this Union, and said to them, " There is a certain Tuesday, the second 
Tuesday after you have organized, when you shall not lix your own 
time of meeting ; when you shall not even adjourn over. You shall 
meet at twelve o'clock. When you meet you shall not vote by ballot ; 
you shall vote viva voce. Your clerk shall call the roll. You shall vote 
for a Senator." The law prescribes how the clerks of both houses shall 
make the entries in their journals. If there is no election, the clerk 
shall certify it ; and then this national authority says : "If there is no 
election by the separate vote of the two houses the second day, I t^ke 
your two houses and consolidate them into one. I abolish the distinc • 
tion between senator and representative, put them into one hall and 
hold them in joint session from day to day, and they shall vote as one 
body until a Senator is elected." 

Who does all that to State legislatures ? It is doue by a law of the 
United States passed in July, 1800; and no Democrat has denounced it 
as unconstitutional ; no State legislature has made any opposition to 
it ; and every one of the seventy-six Senators now at the other end of 
this Capitol, holds his seat in pursuance of the operation of that law. 

]S"ow, if we do all that unchallenged to the legislature of a sovereign 
State, who will say that we cannot go among our own citizens and super- 
vise and protect our own ballot-boxes where men are to be elected to 
seats on this floor I Yonr constitutional question is given away when 
yoii admit the super\isions there, as you do in this bill; still more 
decisively it is given away by the universal acquiescence in the law for 
electing Senators. 

The great danger which threatens this country is, that our sover- 
eign may be dethroned or destroyed by corruption. In any monarchy of 
the world, if the sovereign be slain or become lunatic, it is easy to jnit 
another iu his place, for the sovereign is a person. But our sovereign 
is the whole body of voters. If you kill or corrupt or render lunatic our 
sovereign, there is no successor, no regent to take his place. The source 
of our sovereign's supreme danger, the point where his life is vulnerable, 
is at the ballot-box, where his will is declared ; and if Ave cannot stand 
by that cradle of our sovereign's heir-apparent and protect it to the 
uttermost against all assassins and assailants, we have no government 
and no safety for the future. [Applause.] 

Mr. EwrxG. I hojie the House will allow inc to ask the jxputleman a qnostion and 
him to rci)ly. I nsk the fjeutleman, may we therefore authorize United States super- 
visors to inspect the officers of the house aud senate of each State as to the manner of 
election when electing a United States Senator, and appoint marshals to back up the 
supervisors, ami send out the Army to hack up the marshals ? 

Mr. Garfield. Xot at all. The gentleman from ]S"ew Jersey [Mr. 
EobesonJ answered that by anticipation. 

Our Constitution adopted the legislatures of the States as our agents 
to elect Senators at the times and in the manner which Congress may 
by law<lirect. Tliey were adopted as bodies organized under State laws. 

For the election of Eepresentatives to this House, we may set up all 
our own machinery if we please. We may adopt the State machinery, 
and superadd our own national sui)erinteudence and safeguards; aud the 
safeguards which have already been established we will mainiaiu aud 
d efc nd. [ /Applause . ] 



21 



4. SECOND ARMY APPROPRIATIOX BILL. 

The ?Iouse being iu Committee of tlie Wliole ou tlio State of the Uiiiou, ou tlie sec- 
ond Army approiiriatiou bill, June 11, 1879 — 

Mr. GrARFiELD stiid: Permit me, Mr. Chairman, to recount, ver 
briefly, the steps which have been taken in regard to this Army appro- 
priation bill in connection with the legislative bill. At the close of th e 
last session, those two bills were'pre vented from passing, upon the alleged 
ground that there were three grievances in the form of laws which gen- 
tlemen on the other side said must be redressed by repeal before they 
would vote the appropriations necessary to carry on the government. 
One gTievance was set forth in a vague general charge, but not well 
founded, that there was a law upon the statute-book that authorized 
military interference with elections. The second was that the jurors' 
test oath, made necessaiy by the war, was now a hardship and a griev- 
ance. The third was that the several sections of the law relating to 
supervisors and marshals at national elections were a grievance which 
must be removed by repeal. And we were told, in the most unequivocal 
language, by the DemcKiratic leaders in both Houses, that the $45,000,000 
needed for the maintenance of the civil and military functions of the 
government should never be appropriated until these statutes were 
rej^ealed. 

In response to these demands, we declared our willingness on this .side 
of the House, tirst, to pass a bill which the Senate, a Republican Senate, 
sent to us repealing tliat section of the statute which prescribed a test 
oath for jurors. We were ready then, we are ready now, to pass that 
bill just as the Senate sent it to us at the last session. Second, we said 
then, we have frequently repeated the offer this session, and we say 
now, that we have never voted for a law to make use of the Army to 
run elections. We have said repeatedly that there never was in this 
country and there is not now such a law; and we do not desire such a 
law or such a practice ; and that, if any act was needed to prevent the 
running of elections by bayonets, we were ready to help prevent it. 
These two propositions we offered at the close of the last session, in order 
to remove any real or apparent ground of complaint on those two scores, 
I^rovided that on the other side, the third demand, namely, the repeal 
of the laws relating to supervisors and marshals, should be abandoned. 

These offers were rejected with arrogant contempt; and the extra 
session was forced upon the country. A struggle of nearly three months 
has followed. Xearly all the legislative appropriations have now passed 
this House without conditions or change of the laws. 

With this general review I shall now confine my remarks wholly to 
the history of the Army api^ropriatiou bill. Soon after this session be- 
gan, we were tendered an Army bill that had in it not a repeal of the 
law of 18G5, alleged to be an offense — not that; for we tendered that, 
ami 109 Republicans voted to repeal it, and not one Republican voted 
against the repeal while every Democrat in this House voted against 
its repeal. Instead of a repeal, it was i^roposed so to modify the law of 
1865 as to enlarge its restrictions bej'ond the Army and Xavy and make 
it a crime, punishable by imprisonment or tine, for any civil officer of the 
United States to emi)loy any armed force, soldiers or citizens, to keep 
the peace at the national elections. In other words-, we were tendered 
a proposition which swept the whole circle of the civil powers with its 
prohibitions, and i^revented the civil authorities of the nation from pre- 



22 

serving the peace at the elections of onr national legislature or protect' 
ing supervisors in the execution of their duties. 

Tiiat assault upon the law we resisted as one man. But while we 
r3siste(l, we protested tliat we were not and never had been advocates 
of running elections by bayonets. 

Though that bill, witli its revolutionary menance, passed both Houses, 
it was wrecked upon the rock of the Constitution, and went down, leav- 
ing not a spar afloat on the face of the political waters. 

A Member. It met with a veto. 

Mr. Garfield. Yes ; it met the veto with which the Constitution 
had wisely armed our Chief Magistrate. Then came the second chapter. 
A short bill of six or eight lines was introduced, not merely repealing 
the military provisions of the law of 18G5, but in eiltect declaring that 
the Army of the United States should not be used to enforce any of 
the laws of the Union anywhere, at any time when an election was 
being held. We pointed out the fact that the bill would smite with 
paralysis the executive authority of the nation during two, three, five, 
ten, or possibly a hun<lred days of every year ; that under its provisions 
even the property of the nation could not be protected from destruction 
at any place where any election was being held. This violent measure 
was also passed by the solid Democratic vote of both Houses ; but, like 
its predecessor, it ran against the rock of the Constitution and went to 
the bottom [applause on the Eepublican side], and only bubbles mark 
the spot where it went down. 

And now we have before us another bill making appropriations for 
the support of the Army. Uefore considering its other provisions, I turn 
aside to congratulate the country and the Army that so many gentlemen 
on both sides have finally consented to strike out the ninth section, 
w^hich would have proved a hardship to the meritorious ofiicers of the 
Army by stopping promotions for an indefinite period ; and I tender 
my compliments and thanks to the distinguished gentleman from Virginia 
[Mr. Johnston] who made the motion. The country and the Army will 
not forget it. I believe the appropriations made in this bill are sufticient 
for the support of our military establishment, and no laws in reference 
to which there is any controversy are repealed by it. 

This brings me to the consideration of the only provision about which 
there is any question. It is the sixth section, and I will read it: 

Sec. 6. That no money appropriated in tliis act is appropriated or sliall Ijc paid for 
the subsistence, equipment, transportation, or compensation of any i)ortion of the 
Army of the United States to be used as a police force to keep the peace at the polls 
at any election held within any State. 

My first observation is, that this section does not profess to repeal, 
and does not repeal, any law of the United States. There is not now 
and, so far as I know, tliere never was on our statute-book a law which 
authorized the use of the Army " as a police force" at the polls ; and even 
if this section were a repealing clause, tliere is nothing on which it can 
operate as a repeal. 

But whatever tlie section means, it is in the form of a limitation for 
the coming year upon the objects to whi(3h the appropriations are to be 
applied. It' is declared that this money is not "appropriated for the 
subsistence, &c., of any portion of the Army to be used as a police force 
to keep the peace at the ])olls." I affirm, without fear of successful 
contradiction, that this limited and indirect prohibition does not apply 
to any law or to any practice known in this country. 

Mr. Hawley. Not since the Kansas troubles. 



23 

Mr. Garfield. Certninly not since the Kansas troubles. And, 
furtliennore, I do not know of a man in this House who is in favor of 
using the Army of the United States as an ordinary i>olice force to run 
elections. [Applause on the Democratic side and counter-cheers on the 
Republican side.] There are, I believe, about forty thousand polling- 
places in tlie United States. If our Army roster was full — officers, 
soldiers and cam)) followers — we would not have over twenty-five 
thousand in all. And if there were a law for using the Army as a police 
force at the polls, we should have about three-fourths of one soldier to 
each polling place. 

Xow, if anybody proposes to deploy our Army in that way I do not 
know where the lunatic lives. I speak for myself, and of course for 
everybody who thinlcs as I do, and for nobody else. We hold two 
things: first, that we will not, if we can help it, let vital and righteous 
laws be repealed or ludlified as the condition of getting an appropria- 
tion to support the government. We have resisted, and will resist to 
the end, all such measures. And, in the second place, even under the 
pressure of party feeling and party opposition, we will do no act and 
cast no vote that will ])lace us really or apparently in any attitude 
inconsistent with the old and recognized principles and traditions of 
English and American liberty, namely, that civil, not military, force is 
the usual, the safe, the American method of keeping peace at the polls. 

That no one may misunderstand me, let me put the case thus: Sup- 
I)osesome one should offer the following as a substitute for this section: 

Be it enacted, <fc., That it shall be lawful for the President of the United States to 
use the Army or any portion of it as a police force to keep the peace at the jiolls at 
any election held within any State. 

Is there a man in this House that would vote to make that a part of 
our law? If there be one, let him speak. [A pause.] 

Mr, FiXLEY. Did not the gentleman vote for a iiroposition substantially that? 

Mr. Garfield. Never in my life, nor anything like it. 

Mr. FiNLEY. The vote of the gentleman last session was precisely that in effect. 

Mr. Garfield. The gentleman is utterly mistaken. Now, if no one 
would vote to enact into law the thing which this section says is not 
appropriated for, how can any one hold that the section prohibits any- 
thing that ought to be done ? 

I say, for one, that in so far as this section indicates the relation 
between the civil and military arm of the government in the conduct 
of elections it meets my cordial concurrence ; and a vote for the section 
will put at rest the reckless and false charge that this side of the House 
desire to run elections by bayoneis. 

I adnnt, as my friend from Indiana [Mr. Baker] has said, that the 
section is mere surplusage. It does not repeal or change any existing 
law; but if its framers think that by offering it they expect to gain a 
party advantage by getting me, or those with whom I act, to cast a vote 
that' implies that the Army ought to be used as an ordinary police at 
elections they are greatly mistaken; for they have set a very open trap, 
baited with a very small piece of very i)oor cheese. 

Now, Mr. Chairman, a word further in reference to the language of 
the section. Some gentlemen may be troubled about the scope and 
meaning of the words "to be used as a police force." Let me recall a 
little history. When flagrant war was raging, when eleven States 
were banded against the Union to destroy it, and the theater of war 
spread over five or six States that adhered to the Union, there was in 



24 

f-AQt military interference at the elections ; it ^vas the military inter" 
ference of the armed enemies of the United States. 

I once voted at an election where there was very serions military in- 
terference. In the antnmn of 1SG2 under the heights of Missionary 
Kidge, near the city of Chattanooga, when 5,000 Ohio soldiers under the 
laws of that State were permitted to vote, I in company with my com- 
rades voted for a governor of Ohio. 

AYhile we were voting, the shells from the batteries of armed enemies 
of the United States were bursting over our heads, and some of our 
voters were killed while in the exercise of their right of suffrage as cit- 
izens- of Ohio. That was the only military interference with elections 
that I ever A\itnessed. [Ap])lause on the Republican side.] Now, it was 
to prevent that kind of military interference that the armies of the 
United States in time of war kept otf the armed enemies of the United 
States in the State of Kentucky and in other border States while elec- 
tions were being held there. And in order that, in the performance ot 
that necessary duty, they might not interfere with the freedom of elec- 
tions and the right of citizens, the act of February, 1865, was passed 
while our guns were yet smoking and while we were yet in line of battle. 
Even in that act it was provide*!, under the severest penalties of crim- 
inal law, that no officer, civil, militaiy, or naval, should interfere with 
the right of any man to vote, or should undertake to presciibe qualiti- 
catious for a voter. 

Now, I say that the act of 1865 was in the interest of civil liberty, 
restraining our armies from doing any wrong or committing any outrage. 
And in that act there occurs for the first time in the history of our leg- 
islation connected with the Army the expression "to keep the peace at 
the polls." And even there it is used for the purpose of saying that the 
law does not make it a crime punishable by imprisonment and fine for 
an officer of the government to "keep the peace at the ix)lls" or to re- 
pel the armed enemies of the United States. ISTothiug in that law refers 
to the use of the Army as an ordinary police force. The marshals and 
their dei)uties are the police force of the United States. Our Army is 
go^'erned by the rules and articles of war, and is always used as an 
army when it is ordered to execute the laws. 

The i)roi)Osition to use our Army as a police, to send the soldiers out 
and station them one by one at the polls to run the elections as a police, 
is a fiction so absurd that I trust no man on this side of the House will 
give the least color to the assumption that he favors it by holding that 
this sixth section repeals, suspends, or modifies any existing statute. 

Mr. Williams, of Wisconsin. Will my distiuguislied friend allow me to submit to 
hiiu oue question, which he will uuelerstaud I put in the utmost good faith. 

Mr. Garfield. Certainly. 

Mr. WiLLiAJis, of Wisconsin. It is this: Are you now in favor of usiug any portion 
of the Army of tlie. United States at any time, under any cireumstauces, in any emer- 
gency, to keep the peace at the polls 1 

Mr. Garfield. Xot in the sense of using that Army as an ordinary 
police force. 

l\Ir. Williams, of Wisconsin. In any form or manner? 

Mr. Carlisle. This section does not refer to the use of the Army as an ordinary 
police force. I do not mean as an ordinary civil police, but iu any form whatever. Is 
the gentleman in favor of using the Army iu any form whatever to keei) the peace at 
the polls f 

Mr. Garfield. I am in favor of using the Arm}' and the Xavy and 
all the militia of the United States to enforce the laws of the United 



25 

States, any one of tliem and all of them, everywhere, and at all times 
■when the ci^il force is inadequate, but not until then. 

Mr. Willia:\is, of Wiscousiu. Including the keeping of tlie peace at the polls. 
[Laughter on the Democratic side. ] 

Mr. Gakfield. If there be any law that authorizes the President to 
use the Army as an ordinary i^olice force for that purpose I am in favor 
of enforcing it. 

Mr. Williams, of Wisconsin. Does my fi-ieud think that we have that law, or does 
h ' think that we do not have it ? 

I\[r. Garfield. I think we have not; that we never have had it, 
and that we never ought to have it. The marshals and their deputies 
are our police. 

Under our laws, at the present moment, we have the amplest power 
to add deputy marshals and assistant marshals in any number that may 
be needed to' keep the peace at the polls, and those marshals may sum- 
mon the posse, the armed posse of all faithful citizens who will obey 
the orders of the marshals and keep the peace at the polls. This is the 
traditional law of English-speaking people. 

IsTow, if my friend from AVisconsin [Mr. Williams] will remember, it 
was distinctly provided in the law of last year that the Army of the 
United States should not be used as a part of the posse comitatus in any 
case except where the law expressly provided that it shoidd be so used. 
Therefore, in the presence of that restrictive legislation, passed almost 
unaniiiu)usly by a Republican Senate— although I and my friend voted 
against it in the House; yet it was finally concurred in without a divis- 
ion—in the presence of that restrictive legislation, I say there is no law 
in the United States to which this sixth section can attach itself, either 
as a repealing or as a modifying clause. 

Therefore I say in conclusion that whatever use may be made of this 
section as partv literature, it is evident to me that, in the judgment of 
lawvers and courts and executive officers of the government, it will be 
regarded merely and only a stump speech, changing no law and having 
no legal effect whatever. I shall vote for the bill. 



o. JUDICIAL APPEOPEIATIOX BILL. 

The House being in Committee of the ^^^lole House on the state of the Union on 
the judicial appropriation bill, June 10, 1879 — 

Mr. Garfield said: Mr. Chairman, those provisions of this bill which 
itemize the expenses of the courts, are in the right direction, the direc- 
tion of economy and a prudent regard for the safe disbursement of the 
public funds. I welcome them in this respect as in pursuance of a pohcy 
which Ave ought always to approve. 

In so far as the bill creates unnecessary deficiencies, as has been stated 
by the gentleman from New York [Mr. Hiscock], it is objectionable. 
The fair and manly course for the House to pursue is to appropriate 
what is fully adequate, and no more, to meet the expenses of the 
current fiscal year. The opposite course has been frequently pursued 
by political parties; but, in the long run, it has been found to be wise 
to make an apparent reduction of expenditures knowing that the sup- 
plies withheld must be made up by subsequent deficiency bills. There 
is no real gain to any party in the long run; and it is a bad way to man- 



26 

age tlie fiscal affairs of tlie government. I hope, therefore, wliatever 
anienduient this bill may need in that respect will be made, and that 
the fnll amonnt reqnired for the actual service of the year will be added. 

In reference to the two clauses wliich have been referred to by the 
gentleman from New York, and which are found on pages 2 and 3 of the 
bill (wliich I have a copy of oidy by borrowing it from a member of the 
committee), I will make a few observations. It is not a valid objection 
against the passage of an appropriation bill that it does not embrace 
all the objects for which appropriations should be made. We cannot 
justly vote against appropriations which are proper in themselves merely 
because the amounts are ]iot large enough. 

But thei-e is a clause at the end of tlie tirst section which is something 
more tlian a mere omission to make a necessary appropriation ; I read 
it: "No part of the money hereby appropriated is appropriated to pay 
any salaries, compensations, fees, expenses, under or in virtue of title 
20 of the E-evised Statutes." It is fair to inquire whether those statutes 
do not command the executive officers of the government to perform 
some positive duty, and whether by this clause we are not only neg- 
lecting to appropriate, but are virtually nullifying the law by prevent- 
ing its enforcement. If the clause wliich I have read stood alone, it 
would be less objectionable; but taken in connection with the second 
section, which I will read presently, it amounts to a legislative prohi- 
bition, for one year, to enforce the provisions of title 26. The sections 
of that title are the laws which this House and the Senate have vainly 
tried to repeal, but have found they have not the constitutional power 
to do so. We were told, in the outset, that these laws should be repealed 
or no appropriations would be made. But it has been demonstrated to 
the most unobservant, that the present Congress is powerless to re- 
l»eal these laws, and the attempt has been wisely abandoned. The chief 
amounts needed for the support of the ci\il departments were appropri- 
ated in the bill which we passed yesterday, with no provision for repeal- 
ing or modifying the law ; but now the Committee on Appropriations 
propose a bill by wdiich, for the coming year, these laws shall be not 
repealed, but not enforced — nullified. 

Now, gentlemen, that is only an indirect way of doing temporarily, 
for one year, what you have no constitutional authority to do abso- 
lutely and permanently. This provision ought to be stricken out. As 
I have already intimated, the clause to which I have referred draws its 
evil inspiration from the provisions of the second section, which I will 
now read: 

That the sums ai)pi-opriato(T iu this act for the persons and public service embraced 
in its provisions are in full for such persons and ])ublic service for the fiscal year end- 
ing June 30, 1880; aud no department or oflicer of tlie government shall, during said 
fiscal year, make any contract or inciir any liability for the future payment of money 
until an appropriation sufficient to meet sacli contract or pay sucli liability shall have 
first been made, by law. 

Now, Mr. Chairman, let us consider the effect of this section ux)on ex- 
isting law. 

Mr. Cox. I desire to ask the gentleman wlietlier what he has just read is not sub- 
stantially the law now ? 

Mr. Garfield. My remarks will soon answer the gentleman. In 
1870, in order to prevent the extravagant use of the public money, Con- 
gress passed a law restricting the expenditures for any one year to the 
appropriations made for tliatyear; that is, if the appropriations made 
for the year were not sutficient, a deficiency must be asked for. Unex- 
pended balances, remaining from previous years, could not be ajiplied to 



27 

meet deficiencies. This was a wise provision. Then it was fonnd that 
there was a tendency to incur obligations by making- contracts, such as 
for the rent of buihlings, the lease extending over a series of years ahead. 
Thus obligations were incurred for which no appropriations of money 
had been made. To check that tendency, section 3079 of the Eevised 
Statutes was enacted in these words : 

No department of the p;overniiient shall expend, in any one fiseal year, any sum in 
excess of appropriations made liy Congress for that fiscal year, or involve the oovern- 
uient in any contract for the future payment of money in excess of such appropriations. 

Now, in pari materia, as part of the same general prohibition, gentle- 
men will find, in section 3732, this enactment: 

No contract or pnrcliase on behalf of the United States shall he made, unless the 
same is authorized by law or is under an appropriation adequate to its fulfillment, ex- 
cept^ — 

But here is an important exception that gentlemen appear to have 
overlooked, and it answers the question of the gentleman from New 
York [Mr. Cox]— 

Excei)t in the War and Navy Dejiartments, for clothinj?, subsistence, forage, fuel, 
quarters, or transportation ; which, liowever, shall not exceed the necessities of the 
current year. 

Perhaps this section may throw a little side-light on another bill which 
is shortly to be before us in regard to. feeding, clothing, and transport- 
ing the Army. Under the laws as they now stand, if Congress neglects 
to pass the regular appropriation bills, or if the appropriations run out, 
still the Army is to be fed and not starved, clothed and not left naked, 
transi)orted to points of danger and not left idle and useless. So also 
witli the Navy. But here is a section which, for one year, nullities sec- 
tion 3732, for it makes no exception. 

Mr. Carlisle. Did not the act of 1870 repeal all that! 

Mr. GrAKFiELD. No, sir. 

Mr. Carlisle. Why not ? 

Mr. Garfield. Because of the exception which I have just read with 
reference to the Army and the Navy, which has never been construed 
as repealed. 

Mr. Carlisle. You have read the exceptions in the act of 1861; hut tlie act of 1870, 
a later statute, contained no exceptions whatever. 

Mr. Gaufield. I have read to the gentleman from the Eevised Stat- 
utes now in force two exceptions which must be construed together; one 
does not repeal the other. 

Mr. Carlisle. How did that provision get there? 

Mr. Garfield. It is enough for me to know that this is the law. 
Both sections have been adopted by Congress in the revision of 1874. 
But this is not all. Besides nullifying the exceptions of that section for 
the coming year, there is imported into this second section of the bill a 
new term. Before this, outside of these exceptions, a department could 
not make a contract, a written contract, binding the government to pay 
money for an object for which no appropriation had been made. 

That was wise and judicious, for it prevented the departments from 
entering into large schemes that bound the government in advance of 
the action of Congress. But here is another expression not knosvu in 
our existing statutes : 

No department or officer of the government shall ^ * * make any contract or 
incur any Uahility. 



28 

Here is a provision wliieli is mucli broader tlian any that can be 
fonnd in the statutes, as every hi wyer will con('ede. "Incur liabil- 
ity." What does that mean! Suppose the President of the United 
States should think it important to send a minister extraordinary to 
some foreign court, being' authorized thereto by the Constitution, and 
in an emergency should send hiui. Wouhl he incur liability I Cer- 
tainly. Sujtpose he had been ordered by Congress to do it. Suppose 
it was made mandatory under the law, but there hapi)ened to be no 
special appropriation for it, and he should make the appointment. 
Would he "incur liability " for which an appropriation had not first 
been made ? Suppose it should so happen that a new judicial district 
had been created by act of Congress, and the President should be 
ordered by the law to appoint a judge, but there haj^i^ened to be no ap- 
propriation for the salary of the judge. The President in appointing 
that judge according to law incurs a liability for the government to pay 
the salary. In short, any executive act of his which by law he is com- 
manded to perform, he is here forbidden to perform, during the coming 
year, because in doing so he incurs a liability for which an appropriation 
has not been s])ecially made in advance. 

The object of this legislation is i)lain. During the coming year there 
is to be an election for members of Congress in the State of California, 
and one in tlie Westchester district of Xew York to fill a vacancy ; and 
this legislation is leveled at these elections, so that neither the courts nor 
the United States marshals shall appoint deputy marshals to act as 
official witnesses or to keep the peace at those elections, in order that 
the United States may be proi)erly and lawfully present at the creation 
of its own legislators. This legislation is an attempt to defeat and 
cripple the power of the United States to be present at those two elec- 
tions which are to be held during the coming summer. It is an attempt 
to accomplish by indirection what cannot be done by an open and j)laiu 
repeal. 

Now, Mr. Chairman, as we have successfully resisted the repeal of 
righteous laws, in spite of the threat that tlie appropriations would be 
refused, none the less will we resist their nullification. The chapter of 
forced repeal seems to have been closed. Grentlemen have abandoned 
it. But the chapter of nullifying laws is now opened. Again we stand 
upon the unassailable proposition that not only shall these just laws 
remain upon the statute-book, but that they shall be executed. 

If you do not appropriate the money we cannot help ourselves. We 
are powerless to appropriate it without your aid. You are the majority ; 
but not by our consent shall you nu.lUfy a law which the Constitution docs 
not periuit you to repeal. I will now hear the gentleman from Illinois. 

Mr. Spjiixgkk. I rose to ask the t^entleiiiau the ({uestiou whether it was not witliin 
the proviiiee of" a majority of this Hoiise and of the Senate to withhokl appropriations 
for any purpose that they niii^ht desire. 

Mr. Garfield. Oh, yes. 

Mr. Spkingrh. What compLaint, then, have yon to make against the majority of 
this House and of the other Ifousc for rcfiisiiiii; api)ro;)riations for objects which they 
deem subversive of the rights and liberties of tlie people ? 

^h\ Garfield. I answer the gentleman from Illinois by a quotation 
from tlie distinguished gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Tucker], who is 
not now here. He defined right to be equal to power plus duty. Xow 
you have the power to withhold ai)i)n)priations for executing the laws, 
but have you the right ? Your power and your duty put together consti- 
tute your right in the best sense of the word. Of course you are your 
own judges of duty. But we are all here, Mr. Chairman, under the 



29 

solemn obligation of an oatli. We are all s\vorn before tlie Searcher of 
all hearts that we will well and faithfully perform the duties of Repre- 
sentatives under the Constitution. And the Constitution makes it our 
duty to appropriate the necessary means to enforce the laws. The Con- 
stitution provides that the judges, the President, and other officers sliall 
receive a fixed compensation at stated times, and this can only be done 
by our being faithful to our oaths. 

Will the gentleman deny that we are under a solemn obligation to 
make all the appropriations necessary to carry on the government and 
execute the laws of the United States ? If any gentlemen here see fit 
to neglect that high duty and violate that great obligation, they must 
answer to their own constituents, to their consciences, and to God. But, 
as for me, I hold that to appropriate the money required by the law is 
my duty; and my vote shall be for the appropriations under the laws as 
they are, and not coupled with acts which nullify or obstnict them. 

There have come into our Treasury during the last year $235,000,000. 
Every dollar of that money came from the people under the sanction of 
laws which were passed for the express purpose of raising money for the 
support of the government. That money is in the Treasury for that pur- 
pose ; and we are the trustees of that fund under the law and the Con- 
stitution. The people paid it without imposing any conditions; they 
paid it, under the laws as they now exist, to support the government. 

Now, therefore, if we, the trustees of that great fund, step in between 
those for whom we hold the trust and the execution of the trust, and say 
we will not apply this money according to the laws under which we re- 
ceived it, but will impose conditions of our own different from those 
under which they paid it, are we not betrayers of a trust, and violators 
of the Constitution t 



During the debate on the second section of the bill, the same day, Mr. Garfield said : 

Mr. Chairmah, I move to amend by striking ont in line 6, section 2, 
the words "or incur any liabiUty." I do tliat because it will leave the 
statutes on the subject plain and unambiguous. If these words are out, 
the remainder of the provision is not nnlike what is now in the law, and 
I think there would be no ambiguity in the section ; but if these words 
be retained, no man can know i^recisely what he may or may not do 
without violating the law. 

I do not myself think that, strictly and properly construed, this section 
suspends a number of sections of the Revised Statutes which some gen- 
tlemen may think are temporarily repealed ; but Avith these words here 
they leave an uncertainty hanging over many sections of the Revised 
Statutes as to what constitutes incurring liability. 

I can conceive such a thing as this : The President may appoint a man 
and may say to him, "Go and do this duty; the law authorizes me 
to appoint you. You may never receive anj pay. You will never re- 
ceive any unless Congress appropriates it hereafter." Possibly the 
President would not thereby incur any liability. I presume, when elec- 
tion day comes, the judges can appoint supervisors and the marshals can 
appoint assistant niarshals in the same way. There is certainly nothing 
here which prevents them froui doing their duty; and if they are told 
at the time of their appointment that they never can have any pay from 
the government unless Congress should thereafter appropriate it, query, 
whether any liability has been incurred. I rather think not. 



30 

Mr. Springer. I should think there had l)een. 

Mr. (tAUFIELD. I think not. The liability spoken of here is certainly 
a pecuniary one. But if the gentleman thinks there is liability, it proves 
the necessity of making the language; clear, Avhich certainly Avill be done 
by striking out the words Avhich render it doubtful. [Cries on the Uem- 
ocratic side of '^ Vote ! " '' Vote ! " ] Not quite yet. 

Now, if gentlemen have put these words in here to suit two views of 
this case, so that they can say to one class of their friends, "AVe have 
done it," and to others who do not think they ought to have done it, 
"We have not done it", I say if they have had a double purpose in view, 
these words are well chosen. But if they have a plain, frank, manly 
purpose in view, that everybody can understand, they should leave these 
words out. I think, therefore, for the honor of the House and for the 
clearness and definiteness of the statutes, these words ought to come 
out; and in the interest of good legislation I make the motion to strike 
them out. 

Mr. Cox. I understand my friend from Ohio to say that he believes United States 
supervisors and others Avill he appointed. 

Mr. Garfield. I did not say they wordd be, but perhaps they can 
be 

Mr. Cox. That the President and the judges would appoint them under this clause 
if l)assed — that they would be appointed. 

Mr. Gabfield. The gentleman will understand I am merely saying 
if it should be done and they were told they never could have any pay 
until Congress subsequently approi)riated the money — I refer to deputy 
marshals — I doubt whether that would constitute under this section an 
incurred liability. 



In the debate on the third section, the same day — 

Mr. Gatjfield said : 

I offer the following amendment : 

In line 16, after the word "citizen," insert the words "of jjood atandinn"; and 
strike out all atter the word "held," in line 17, down to aud including the word 
" belong," in line 19 ; so that it will n^ad : 

"^Vhich conunissioner shall be a citizen of good standing residing in the district in 
which such court is held." 

This will strike out the words : 

And a well-known member of the principal political party opposed to that to which 
the clerk may belong. 

I offer this amendment because T am unwilling, if I can i)revent it, to 
allow a statute to pass this House, which, for the tirst time in the history 
of this goveriunent, injects party politics into our jury law\s. The words 
"political parties" are unknown in our Constituti(m. There is not a 
word in the Constitiition that indicates such a creation as a political 
party. 

Political ])arties are ]n'obably necessary in all free governments; but 
there has been one' ])la('e in the whole circle of our judicial system into 
which hitherto tlie word ])arty has never found its idace as a part of 
the law. Our goddess of justice, so far as i)ersons are concerned, is 
l)ainted blind; but so far as the objects and essence of justice are con- 
cerned, she sees the whole world. 

Now it is proposed, most unwisely, and I think for the first time 
in our history, (and I beg the lawyers and judges who sit before me to 



think of tliis,) to put iuto the jury-boxes a man recognized as a political 
partisan, and then another beside him recognized as belonging- to another 
political party, to administer jnstlce. One is to do Democratic jnstice, 
another Kepublican justice, another Greenback justice, and so on to the 
end of the chapter. 

If that phrase be planted in onr law no man can tell the bitter, bad 
fruits that it may produce in the future of our jurisprudence. 

Let us, gentlemen, have one place where, as lawyers and citizens seek- 
ing their rights, there shall be no such thing as politics recogTiized, but 
Avhere equal and exact justice will be meted out to all men. 

Now, the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. Weaver] proposed, a little while 
ago, what was entirely proi>er, that it should not be confined to two polit- 
ical parties. There may be two, three, four, or five parties — there are 
])erhaps that many in the country — and if you let the idea of party poli- 
tics get into the law of juries at all, you ought to go through the whole 
list of parties, to be just or fair. 

Let me ask how many clerks of national courts there are whose 
politics you can really ascertain without an inquest? There are a 
great many of these clerks who have held their positions during the 
lives of half a dozen political parties, and who have no political parti- 
sanship in them, and who make it a part of their daily bread to keep 
out of politics. Some of these clerks were in oflice before the Eepubli(?au 
party was born, and do not know to which party they belong, Now, in 
order to execute this proposed law, you must find out what their polit- 
ical opinions are; you must, in fact, make them partisan before you can 
appoint a commissioner or impanel a jury. 

I beg gentlemen to let this amendment of mine pass, in the interest of 
law and justice. I hope that the fact that we have been looking into 
each other's faces and fighting a political battle, has not put the ma- 
jority into such an attitude that they will reject everything proposed by 
me or my associates. I should be glad for the sake of justice to see the 
House agree to this amendment. 



In reply to Mr. McMahon, Mr. Gaefield said : 

Mr. Chairman, the gentleman has referred to the electoral commis- 
sion. He will remember that there was not, in that law, a word which 
referred to one political party or the other. It was the sense of decency 
and fair play between the two parties which, after the law was passed, 
led them voluntarily to put men of both parties upon that commis- 
sion. The Republican Senate put upon it a fair share of Democrats, 
and the Democratic House put upon it a proper share of Eepul)licans. 
But the law said not a word about selecting men from o])posite political 
parties to serve upon the commission. The law was just as this law 
ought to be — free from the recognition of party politics. 



6. JUDICIAL APPEOPEIATION BILL. 

NULLIFICATION. 

Tlie House having under consideration the conference report of the two Houses on the 
judicial appropriation bill, June 19, 187^ — 

Mr. Garfield said: Mr. Speaker, we do not insist that this House is 
obliged to vote all the money which some of us may think necessary 
lor any given purpose. If the majority ofier to appropriate for a par- 



32 

tieular purpose a parfc onlj- of tlio money needed, we would not be jus- 
titied in voting against the bill merely because the amount is insuffi- 
cient, for it might be your purpose to supply the deficiency hereafter. 
But it is certainly an objectionable mode of legislation so to cut down 
the appropriation bills as to make a deficiency inevitable. This bill is 
open to that objection; it does not appropriate enough; for it wliolly 
omits a part of the usual supplies. But that objection alone would not 
l^revent this side from voting for it. 

The feature of the bill which is most objectionable, and to which we 
do not and cannot agree, has been well stated by my colleague [Mr. 
ZVIonroe]. The bill goes beyond appropriations, and proposes by law 
to lay hold of the executive department of this government and affirm- 
atively prevent its officers from enforcing certain laws of the land. That 
is the attem])t which we resist and shall continue to resist. Tiie objec- 
tionable provision is now made definite and unmistakable in this confer- 
ence report. The language of the clause as it first passed the House 
was somewhat vague, but here it is plain, and we perfectly understand 
its import. If any doubt remained, my colleague who presented the re- 
port [Mr. McMahon] remov^ed it, by declaring the i>urpose of the clause. 
The issue is narrowed down to this : The gentleman tells us that he and 
his associates are determined that tliere shall be appointed no marshals, 
deputy marshals, or assistant marshals to execute the laws of the Union, 
as embodied in title 2G of the Eevised Statutes ; that they have devised 
and agreed on this (;lause in the conference between the two Houses so 
as to prevent the enforcement of tliat part of tlie existing law. This 
makes a shari) issue which everybody can understand. 

Xow, assuming that the gentlemen on the other side do not like these 
provisions of law relating to elections (and we understand that to be 
their urranimous sentiment), they ought to propose amendments to them. 
My colleague who presents this report says that the law has been 
used for i^artisan purposes ; that marshals, deputy marshals, and assist- 
ant marslials have been appointed merely to advocate and advance the 
political interest of one party at the elections. If that be so, it is a just 
criticism of the law, and an amendment ought to be olfered to correct 
such an abuse. If my colleague will offer an amendment, or allow us to 
offer an amendment, so as to put the appointment of deputy and assist- 
ant marshals who are to serve in connection with Congressional elections 
on the same basis as the appointment of supervisors — that is, that they 
shall be appointed by the courts, and shall be chosen in equal numbers 
from the difi'erent political parties — we will aid liim, and the abuse of 
which he complains can be corrected. But that is not in the line of the 
gentleman's purpose nor that of his party. The}^ do wish not to better 
the law, but to annul it. They do not wish the law executed, so long as 
they have not the' power to make the appointments and execute it in 
their own way. 

Recent events have shown them that they cannot repeal these 
statutes. In the present situation of parties and opinions in Con- 
gress it is impossible to repeal them. Those who wish to repeal them 
liave not the constitutional majority to do so. They can no more remove 
them from the statute-book than they van enact a law without a- majority 
of votes. In short, they have not tlie constitutional majority to repeal 
these laws. Xot being able constitutionally to repeal them, gentlemen 
on the other side say, " We will prevent their enforcenu'ut." And, in 
attemi)tiug this, they attack tlie government in a very vital i)art. They 
know that the whole (country, without regard to party, needs to have 
the courts of the United States open to all suitors. They know that 



33 

ustice ought to be admiuistered in every district and circuit court of the 
United States. 

They know that United States prisoners are locked up, some under 
sentence of our courts, others awaiting trial; and that the Constitution 
provides that all who are held under charges shall have a speedy trial. 
The great duty, the imperative obligation, to provide for the speedy and 
prompt administration of justice rests upon members of Congress, Re- 
j)ublicans and Democrats alike. But the majority of this House have 
segregated from all the other appropriations of the year this one for the 
judicial expenses of the government, and now offer an appropriation of 
two and a half millions of dollars, and say, not to us alone, but through 
lis to the nation and to all the officers of the nation, that this money of 
the people, which has been paid into the National Treasury for the very 
purj)ose of uuiintaiuing the courts, shall not be used for that purpose, 
only on condition that the Democratic party shall be permitted to couple 
with it a provision that certain laws of the land which they cannot repeal 
shall not be enforced ; nay, more, that for the coming year these laws 
shall be nidlifled. In short, we are told that we must submit to the 
nullification of the election laws, or the courts of the United States shall 
be closed, the prisoners awaiting trial shall be discharged or shall be held 
untried, against the constitutional provision in their behalf, and that no 
provision shall be made even to feed them. It is to be made un- 
lawful to try them, unlawful to keep them, and it is unlawful to dis- 
charge them. With these hard conditions you have fettered the appro- 
priations, the use of which reaches to the very vitals of national justice. 
You say, " Take these appropriations coupled with the nullification of 
certain laws, or you shall not have them at all." 

Gentlemen, we earnestly desire to go home. We have borne the biu'- 
den of this long, weary, and profitless session until we are anxious to go 
to our homes and rest and give the country rest. But we cannot, even 
under the i^ersuasive heat of the dog-star and the pressure of this weary 
and distasteful work, accept the dishonor which this bill offers. It is a 
moral bribe to us to consent to the nullification of laws which you seek 
not to improve but to destroy. We cannot, we will not, consent. 

You have retained in this bill a clause which, if it becomes a law, will 
place the President of the United States between two fires — the fire of 
this law if he disobeys it, and the fire of Heaven if he violates his oath 
by obeying it. 

Mr. McMahon. Will my colleague allow me to ask Mm liow tlie President is at 
all interfered with? 

Mr. Garfield. I will answer. The President has taken an oath 
that he will see to it that the lav\^s be faithfully executed. You do not 
repeal the election laws, but you make it imiiossible for him to execute 
them without violating another. You seek to place him in reach of 
your impeachment on the one hand or, on the other, compel him to 
neglect his duty and violate his oath. We have no legal or moral right 
to put the Chief Executive in such an attitude. The wisdom of the Old 
Testament proverb, "in vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird," 
may be fitly applied in this case. I do not see that there is the slightest 
probability you can catch a bird in this net. 

Mr. House. Do I understand the gentleman from Ohio as threatening us with 
another veto ? 

Mr. Speaker, we have heard of war and rumors of war in another quar- 
ter; but this House, this body, whose members come directly from the 
3 G 



34 

people — tlie only real sovereigns in this conntry — lias not only not coiue 
to blows, bnt so far as I know have not come to threats. 

Mr. House. The geutlemau talks about blows. 

Mr. Gaepield. I say, neither blows nor threats. I am certainly in- 
dnlging: in no threats. I only say yon otter a bill for the approval of the 
Execntive which if he approves puts him in a i)osition where he will be 
involved in a conHict between the Constitution and the law you make. 

Mr. HorsE. What a very frank answer. 

Mr. Garfield. It is both frank and just. I appeal to you, gentlemen, 
whether this kind of legislation meets the approval of your best judg- 
ment. 

Now, I had some hope, when we were told yesterday by my colleague 
I Mr. McMahon] that the amendment which had come from the Senate 
was left open so as to enable the conference committee to soften the 
asperities of this bill — I had some hope that we should see our way 
through the entanglement by finding a bill which gentlemen on this side 
could support, and that we might then adjourn, shake hands, and go 
home. Bnt I am compelled for the present to bid farewell to that pleas- 
ing prospect. We stay. [Applause from the Eepublican side.] 



II. 

DEFEl^SE OF UNIO^ SOLDIERS OF THE SECEDED STATES. 

The Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union having under consideration. 
a proposition to abolish the Southern Claims Commission, April 15, 1879 — 

Mr. Gaefilld said : Mr. CLairmaii,the geueral doctrine of belligerency 
in a territorial war is one of conrse understood by everybody to include 
technically as enemies, all of the inhabitants of the hostile territory. 
That doctrine is recognized by lawyers everywhere. But nobody, so far 
as I know, unless it be the gentleman from Wisconsin, has ever denied 
that, during our late war and since, the Supreme Court has repeat- 
edly determined that the question of loyalty could not be raised against 
a claimant, if a pardon had been granted him by the President or Con- 
gress ; that by a pardon disloyalty is wiped out, so far as his legal rights 
before the court are concerned. This is an answer to all that has been 
said on that point. 

The gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Bragg] agrees with me that the 
amendiuent of the gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. Young] ought not to 
be adopted. He thhiks, however, that the Southern Claims Commission 
ought to be abolished, because he says it was a mistake from the first 
to pay any loyal claims from the South. On that point I take issue with 
him; and I wish to refer to some official statistics which I prepared at 
the last session, in view of a statement then made and now repeated in 
this debate. It was said by the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Ellis] 
that 91) per cent, of all the people of the seceded States were disloyal, in 
our sense of that word ; that almost every Southern man who amounted 
tj anything belonged to that category. I desire to traverse that propo- 
sition by some facts. Leaving out of view all the border States, do gen- 
tlemen know that there were, from the States that went into secession 
and rebellion, military organizations amounting to fifty regiments and 
seven companies of white men who were regularly mustered into our 
Army and who fought bravely under our flag? I have the official record 
in my hand. Pass'ing to the border Southern States, which did not se- 
cedej but whose people were divided, do gentlemen know that in the 
State of Kentucky alone more white soldiers fought under our flag than 
if apoleon took into the battle of Waterloo ? more than all the allied armies 
which Wellington commanded at that battle? Do they not know that 
Missouri furnished one hundred and eighteen regiments of white soldiers 
to the Union Army ; that the Southern States furnished one hundred 
and eighty-six thousand colored troops to the Union Army, and that of 
these ninety thousand were from the States which seceded, and twenty 
thousand from the State of Kentucky ? I say that from the States that 
seceded and went into the rebellion 50,700 white soldiers fought in 
our ranks and under our flag. And this statement does not include the 
thousands of individual men who came into our hues, and joined :N'orth- 
ern regiments. To say that these men were enemies and had no legal 
rights, and that tiie governmeut should not pay them or their families 
all proper claims for supplies and other property taken from them by 
the government thev were defending, is a proposition I had hoped no 
man on either side of this House would make ; and I am glad to know 
that the gentlemen who fought against us in the field do not make it. 
*= 35 



36 

Kot one of them has yet indorsed it. It remains for one of our own sol 
diers, the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Bragg], to say that there 
ought to be nothing paid to any man, however loyal, if he came from 
the South. I am sure that even this House, consisting so largely of Con- 
federate soldiers, will denounce this proposition as in the highest degree 
inequitable and unjust. Let the Southern Claims Commission continue 
until it has acted on the cases now before it, and then let us muster it 
out ; for the cases not already presented are barred by the statute of 
limitation. Let us not enlarge the claim business, but let us complete 
it ; and most of all, let us not so change the law as to abolish the dis- 
tinction between loyal and disloyal claims, making the latter payable, 
which the law has never done. 



III. 

1. EESUMPTION AND THE CUREENCY. 

The Committee of the Whole on the state of the Uuiou having under consideration 
an amendment to nse the reserve i^rovided by law for the redemption of fractional 
currency, April 10, 1879 — 

Mr. Garfield said: 

Mr. Chairman, my colleague [Mr. McMahonJ has gone into the whole 
merits of this question on the point of order. I shall only follow his 
example to a very small extent. The attempt of my colleague, in the 
speech he has just made, to set himself, in contrast with me and many 
others on this side, as the special champion and friend of the soldier, is 
qnite too thin a disguise to deceive anybody. He will remember, as 
will the Honse, that this side tried, again and again, to pass a measure 
authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to extend the sales of 4 per 
cent, bonds suflQcient to cover this whole case. We brought the 
House to a vote on that proposition at least twice at the last session, 
and but for the resistance on the other side it would have prevailed, and 
the soldiers would have been paid. The responsibility for not paying 
them rests with those who resisted that measure, not with those who 
proposed it. We have been selling these 4 per cent, bonds to assure 
resumption ; and that is the law. I think it might fairly be the law 
that they should be issued to provide for payment of soldiers' pensions. 

There is another thing which, perhaps, my colleague did not remember. 
Under a law of last session we issued bonds to the extent of a quarter of a 
million of dollars to endow a private institution for the blind, in one of 
the States of this Union, the endowment being $10,000 a year ; and to 
keep it out of the power of Congress to repeal the act the bonds thus 
issued were made a part of the permanent debt of the United States, in 
order to endow an institution in a State — an institution not national in 
its character. But gentlemen are unwilling to increase the 4 per cent, 
bonded debt of the United States to pay pensions of our soldiers already 
provided by law. 

Now, I have simply made the point of order, that is all ; and no man 
can torture anything 1 have said on this point of order into an unwill- 
ingness that the soldiers shall have their pensions, or that all necessary 
legislation shall be had to make the payment prompt and full to se- 
cure all their rights. It is altogether too late in the day to tell the 
soldiers that gentlemen on this side who have remembered them in a 
thousand ways (my colleague, to say the least, has not remembered 
them in more) are not their friends. 

I made this point (and I have no concealments about it) because I look 
upon this amendment as the entering wedge to a general imrpose to 
break down the system of reserves on which the maintenance of re- 
sumi^tion depends. 

Mr. McMahon. My colleague will permit me to ask him how the issue of $10,000,000 
of the $346,000,000 authorized by law is going to break down the specie reserve which 
amounts to $236,000,000 ? 

Mr. Garfield. That is what I am about to tell the gentleman. I 
say, at the outset, that our whole body of legislation relating to resump- 
tion makes, together a connected chain ; and 

Whichever link you strike, 
Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike. 

37 



38 

Such legislation as this tends at least to weaken that chain. Now, 
my colleague, whose financial knowledge Avould not have been doubted 
if he had not made this speech, amazed me veiy much by saying that 
the subsidiary coinage and the subsidiary currency are no part of the 
general problem of resumption. Why, does he not know perfectly well 
that the subsidiaiy currenc}' in the form of these scrip notes or in coin 
goes to make up the volume of our circulating medium just as much as 
greenbacks, just as much as gold? The great currency question em- 
braces everything that circulates as money ; and it AAill not do to say 
that the subsidiary coinage has nothing to do with the general ijrojio- 
sition. It has very much to do with it. Subsidiary currency in any 
form circulates far more rapidly" than dollar bills, and dollar bills more 
rapidly than five-dollar bills, and these more rapidly than tens. Just 
in proi>ortion to the smallness of tlie denomination of the bill is its cir- 
culation rapid. Here was a pro]>osition to hasteu tlie issue of subsi- 
diary coin. As the law first stood, the silver could only be issued on 
the presentation of the scrip, the silver being jiaid in exchange there- 
for. In order to facilitate the process, Congress provided that, as there 
was a rush to make the exchange, i)eople might deposit greenbacks 
and recei\e silver coin in place of it, but that the greenbacks thus 
deposited sliould be held to redeem according to law the scrip as it 
might come in. This reserve, therefore, of which my colleague speaks, 
is a reserve laid away as a provision against the demand for the scrip, 
in place of which the silver coin has already been issued. 

Mr. Warner. Will my frieud periuit lue to ask liim a (^uestiou? 

Mr. Garfield. Certainly. 

Mr. Warner. Is it not perfectly well iiiHlerstood that the fractional currency, 
against whi(;h I understand it is claimed this ,$10,000,000 is held, is now out of exist- 
ence, or at least that only a small part of it remains for redemption? 

Mr. CtAefield. I will answer my colleague. Estimates have been 
made on that sul)ject. All agree that a certain portion of the scrip is 
l)robal)ly destroyed, and will never be presented for redemption. What 
that proportion is nobody knows. The amount, however, of any circu- 
lating medium which is actually destroyed, is much smaller than people 
suppose. I will give a single instance. There is a bank in my district 
which was in actual operation nearly fifty years, under the State laws, 
and when the new banking system was adopted, it undertook to Avind 
up its old business; that is, being solvent, to redeem all its old bills. 
They have gone on redeeming and redeeming, and the last time I talked 
with tlie cashier he told me that less than two per cent, of the whole 
issue, covering a period of forty years of State banking, was still out; 
and even then almost every week, 'fifteen, twenty, or thirty dollars of old 
bills came back; showing that the destruction of outstanding circulating 
paper money is far less than tlie people suppose. 

Now, tlie highest estimate which has been made is that perhaps 
$10,00(),0()0 of tlie fracti(mal scrip is destroyed and will never come in. 
And here is outstanding at least $15,000,000 not yet brougiit in. I saw 
the i)apcrs yesterday of a single party who took $G,000 of this scrip to 
the Treasury. We have sometimes six, eight, or ten thousand dollars a 
day brought in. The time will doubtless come when it will be safe to 
reduce this reserve, leaving enough to cover what is outstanding and 
will not come in, and let the rest go into circulation. But to say now 
that the whole $10,000,000 sliall go into circulation, leaving none to 
protect this issue, is to break down one of the stated reserves of the 
government to meet its obligations. 



39 

Mr. McMaiion. Will the gentleman from Ohio allow me to put a question to him? 

Mr. Garfield. Certainly. 

Mr. McMahon. Under the specie-resumption law — and I do not wish to argue, I 
only want to state it — under the specie-resumption law the Secretary of the Treasury 
was ordered to redeem fractional currency in silver coin. Now, in July, 1876, we 
authorized him to pay out $10,000,000 of silver coin and to take in $10,000,000 of green- 
hacks. We authorized him to redeem this fractional cuiTency outstanding in green- 
backs, and he has never done it. 

Mr. Garfield. How does my colleague know that? 

Mr. McMahon. I say it because the debt statement shows it; I have it here, and I 
read on page 4 of the Treasury report, currency assets, "United States notes, special 
fund for redemption of fractional currency, $10,000,000." Now it never Avas in con- 
tcmphition of the gentlemen who passed that law in 1876 that when that $10,000,000 
was taken in it should be kept. That was a little private scheme of contraction of 
Mr. Sherman himself. Our order to him was to pay out m redemption of fi-actional 
currency. Instead of that he is redeeming coustantlv iu silver coin and keeping the 
$10,000,000 in. 

Mr. Garfield. I will answer my colleague. I am not responsible for 
the Secretary's execution of his duty under that law. But 1 should say 
if I were the Secretary I would be bound by the law and by the reason 
of the case to hold a su fticient amount of that fund for the ample protec- 
tion of all the outstanding scrip which would be likely to come in. 
Perhaps the Secretary has kept more than is needed; and if he has, it 
is perfectly proper for Congress to ascertain, after a fair examination, 
how much of that he can spare, and then let it out. I will agree to that 
at any time. But my colleague adopts no such method; he says simply 
let it all go, and he proi)oses to make this sweeping change of law and 
give up the whole reserve for that purpose, and therefore to that extent, 
or at least to some extent, breaks over the line of our reserves. 

Now I have said all I desire to say on that subject except a single 
word in conclusion. My colleague pained me by a single expression in 
his speech. Nothing has ever occurred between him and me which 
entitles either of us to say discourteous and indecent things about the 
other; and when my colleague said that though I owed more allegiance 
to the soldier than perhaps to any other class, yet that I appeared to 
act as though I owed my chief allegiance to Wall street, he said what he 
had no more right to say, either as a matter of fact or a matter of fair 
inference, than I would have a right to say he owes his chief allegiance 
to the groggeries and whisky-shops of Dayton ; and as I would not say 
that, I do not think he was entitled to say the other. 

Mr. McMahon. In answer to the gentleman I say this : I have followed with in- 
terest the public career of the gentleman, and if iu all the discussions which have ever 
taken place in this House or this country on haancial qiiestions he can show one vote 
or one speech that was not based upon the idea of speedy resumption, no matter at 
what cost to the great mass of the people, even when his own party separated fi-om 
him upon that question in the Forty-third Cougr ess, when he was in a minority in his 
own party upon this question — if he can show on e vote which he ever cast iu favor of 
what was regarded then by the majority of his own party in the AVest as the interest 
of the people on this question, I wiirtake m y statement back. That is all that it 
covered. 

Mr. Garfield. I will relieve my colleague upon that point. He could 
not certainly praise me any more according to my notions of legislative 
praise than "to say what he has said. If I ever did cast a vote that was 
not in favor of the resumption of speci e payments, that was not against 
all schemes to delay and prevent it, I cast a vote that my conscience 
and my judgment disapproved of. [Applause.] And I venture to say 
1 have cast as many votes as any man on this floor against Wall street 
and the business of gold-gambling which has been destroyed by resump- 
tion ; that gold-gambhng in Wall street which locked up one hundred 



40 

millions of the business capital of this conntry for fifteen years, away 
from all profitable investment, and converted Wall street into a hell 
of gamblers with the business of this country up and down. And if 
every vote of mine in favor of honest money has not been a blow at 
gambling in Wall street, then it has not had the effect I intended. 

Mr. BiUGHT. I desire to ask the geutlemau from Oliio a question. Have not the 
operations of Wall street been simply transferred to the Treasury of the United States? 

Mr. Garfield. In answer to the gentleman from Tennessee, I will say 
that I hope there has been enough of the gold and silver in this conntry 
that had hitherto been lodged in Wall street for gold-gaiid)liug pnr- 
]>oses trausferred to the Treasury of the United States to break down 
the bulls and bears of Wall street permanently, and to maintain the 
sui)remacy of honest money. [Applause.] 



2. THE NEW SILVER BILL. 

The House haviuo- under consideration a bill to authorize the unlimited coinage of 
silver, and to give the profits thereof to the owners of bullion, May 17, lb79 — 

Mr. Garfield said : 

Mr. S])eaker, we have probably never legislated on any question the 
influence of which reaches further, both territorially and in time, and 
touches more interests, more vital interests, than are tonched by this 
and sinnlar bills. No man can doubt that within recent years, and 
notably within recent months, the leading thinkers of the civilized 
world have l^ecome alarmed at the attitude of tlie two precious metals 
in relation to each other; and many leading thinkers are becoming clearly 
of the o])inion that by some wise, judicious arrangement both the pre- 
cious metals must be kept in service for the currency of the world. 
And this opinion has been very ra])idly gaining ground within the last 
six months, to such an extent that England, which for more than half 
a century has stoutly adhered to the single gold standard, is now 
seriously meditating how she may harnsss both tbese metals to the 
monetary car of the world. And yet, outside of this Capitol, I do not 
this day know of a single great and recognized advocate of bimetallic 
money who regards it prudent or safe for any nation largely to increase 
the coinage standard of silver coin at the present time beyond the limits 
fixed by existing laws. France and the states of the Latm Union, that 
have long believed in bi-metallism, maintained it against all coiners and 
have done all in their power to advocate it throughout the world, dare 
not coin a single silver coin and have not done so since ISTi. The most 
strenuous advocates of bi-metallism in those countries say it would be 
ruinous to bi-metallism for France or the Latin Union to coin any more 
silver at present. The remaining stock of German silver now for sale, 
amounting to from forty to seventy-five millions of dollars, is a standing 
menace to the exchanges and silver coinage of Europe. One month ago 
the leading financial journal of London proposed that the Bank of Eng- 
land buy one-half of the ( Jerman surplus and hold ic five years on con- 
dition that tlie German Government shall hold the other half off the 
market. The time is ripe for some wise and prudent arrangement among 
the nations to save silver from a disastrous break-down. 

Yet we, who during the past two years, have coined far more silver 
dollars than we ever before coined since the foundation of the govern- 
ment — ten times as many as we coined during half a century of oiu" 



41 

national life — are to-day ignoring and defying the enliglitened, universal 
opinion of bi-metallists, and saying that the United States, singlehanded 
and alone, can enter the field and settle the mighty issue alone. We are 
justifying the old proverb that "Fools rush in where angels fear to 
tread." 

It is sheer madness, Mr. Speaker. I once saw a dog on a great stack 
of hay that had been floated out into the wild, overflowed stream of a 
river, with its stack-pen and foundation still holding together, but ready 
to be wrecked. For a Uttle while the animal appeared to be perfectly 
hapi)y. His hay-stack was there and the pen around it, and he seemed 
to think the world bright, and his happiness secure, while the sun- 
shine fell softly on his head and his hay. But by and bj' , he began 
to discover that the house and the barn and their surroundings were 
not all there as they were when he went to sleep the night before; and 
he began to see that he could not command aU the prospect and peace- 
fully dominate the scene as he had done before. So with this House. 
We assume to manage this mighty question which has been launched 
on the wild current that sweeps over the whole world, and we bark from 
our legislative hay-stacks, as though we commanded the whole world. 
[ Apiflause.] In the name of common sense and sanity, let us take some 
account of the flood ; let us understand that a deluge means something, 
and try, if we can, to get our bearings before we undertake to settle the 
aftairs of all mankind by a vote of this House. 

Today we are coining one-third of all the silver that is being coined 
in the round world. China is coining another third; and all other 
nations are using the remaing one-tfiird for subsidiary coin. And if we 
want to take rank with China and part company with all of the civilized 
nations of the Western World, let us pass this bill, and then " bay the 
moon " as we float down the whirling channel to take our place among 
the silver monometallists of Asia. 

What this country needs above all other things, is that this Congress 
shall pass the appropriation bills, adjourn, and go home [applause on 
the Eei)ublicau side], and let the forces of business and good order and 
brotherhood, working ia their natural and orderly way, bring us into 
light and stability and peace. And we want time to adjust this great 
international question. Now, while I am speaking, the Administration 
is opening negotiations with all the western nations, to see if there can- 
not be some international arrangement whereby this question of bi-met- 
allism may be wisely settled. We tried it by international monetary 
conference. It was a preliminary reconnaissance, and 

[Here the hammer fell.] 



IV. 

THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER AN OBJECT OF NATIONAL CARE. 

The House liaving uuder coiisideratiou a liill to provide for a comuii-ssion to survey 
the Mississippi Elver, June 21, 1879— 

Mr. CtAEFIELD said: 

Mr. Speaker, I should oppose this bill, very decidedly, if it committed 
us at tliis time to any plan or theory of raanagfiug' the Mississippi River; 
and I think the remarks of the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Baker], 
warning us against committal in any such direction, are wise. But I 
have looked the bill over with what care I could, and it does not seem 
to me tliat by its passage we commit ourselves to anything further than 
the purpose to obtain a(;curate ofticial information touching the present 
condition and needs of this great stream. I admit that we have already 
had examinations and explorations of the Mississippi, some of them sci- 
eutihc and very valuable ; but everybody will concede that one important 
experiment has been made, in recent years, which, though against the 
opinion of the majority of engineers, has proven apparently a great 
success : I mean the jetty system at the mouth of that river. I say 
"apparently," because it is possible that in the long run it may not 
X)nne a success; but at the present moment it .appears to be a great 
and striking snccess in the manageAient of the mouths of that river. If 
it i)rove to be iiermanentlj^ so, all our calculations and, indeed, all our 
theories concerning the improvement and management of otlier portions 
of that river need to be reconsidered in view of the new light that the 
jetty system will throw upon the question. Hence a proposition to turn 
on the light, to get information, and to get it from the best scientific 
ad^'isers that we can call to our aid, is a step in the right direction. I 
have always favored measures which will result in giving us information 
upon all questions about which we are called upon to legislate. What 
shall be done with this knowledge when it comes, will be for our suc- 
cessors to say. We do not commit ourselves or them to any scheme at 
this time. But for myself, I believe that one of the grandest ol our ma- 
terial national interests — one that is national in the largest material 
sense of that word — is the Mississippi River and its navigable tributa- 
ries. It is the most gigantic single natural feature of our continent, far 
transcending the glory of the ancient Nile or of any other river on the 
earth. The statesmanship of America must grapple the problem of this 
mighty stream. It is too vast for any State to handle; too much for 
any authority less than that of the nation itself to manage. And I be- 
lieve the time will come when the liberal-minded statesmanship of this 
country will devise a wise and comprehensive system, that will harness 
the powers of this great river to the material interests of America, so 
that not only all the people who live on its banks and the banks of its 
confluents, but all the citizens of the republic, wliether dwellers in the 
central "valley or on the slope of either ocean, will recognize the impor- 
tance of preserving ami perfecting this great natural and material bond 
of national union between the North and the South — a bond to be so 
strengthened by commerce and intercourse that it can never be severed. 
[Aijplause.] 

One of our early Presidents went so far as even to exceed Ms early 
l^reconceived opinions of the constitutional power of the Executive, in 

42 



43 

order to buy from France a mighty empire to be added to the Union ; 
and he did it for this reason chiefly, that the yonng EepubUc could not 
permanently endure as a nation without owning and controlling the 
mouths of the Mississippi. Nearly the wliole continent west of that 
river was bought, to make the Union perpetual by bringing every foot 
of the shore of the Mississippi under our flag. If I did not think it 
almost unworthy of so great a theme, I would say that if there had been 
no patriotic impulse higher than anj^ consideration of material welfare 
whicli moved twenty millions of Americans to resist the attempt to 
break the Union in pieces, and impelled them to hold it together by all 
the cost of l)k)od and treasure that our late war required, if there had 
been no liigher national sentiment inspiring them, the immense material 
stake which the people of the great North and West and center of this 
country had in the free use of that river from its sources to its mouth, 
that their commerce might go southward to the sea under the one flag, 
iinvexed by conflicting nationalities, this material stake alone would 
have made all the people of the upper valley of the Mississippi resist 
to the last the dismemberment of the Union. 

This great river, which our fathers made such sacrifices to acquire, 
and which the present generation made so much costlier sacrifices to 
redeem from disunion and to hold within the grasp of the nation, we 
have held, not in obedience to mere sentiment alone, not with a view 
of keeping it as a vast and worthless waste of water, but to utilize it 
by making it the servant of all the people of this country. How shall we 
utilize it, unless at some time, and in some wise way, we bridle it by the 
skill of man and make it subser^ient to the interests of commerce "? 

Now, Mr. Speaker and gentlemen of the House, there is another 
reason why I am in favor of this measure. I rejoice in any occasion 
which enables Eepresentatives from the North and from the South to 
unite in an unpartisan efltbrt to jiromote a great national interest. 
I Applause.] Such an occasion is good for us both. And when we can do 
it without the sacrifice of our convictions, and can benefit millions of 
our fellow-citizens, and thereby strengthen the bonds of the Union, we 
ought to do it with rejoicing; for, in so doing, we shall inspire our people 
with larger and more generous views, and help to confirm for them and 
for our posterity to oiu" latest generations, the indissoluble Union and 
the permanent grandeur of this Eepublic. I shall vote for this bill. 
[Applause on both sides of the House.] 



THE EEYIVED DOCTEIKE OF STATE SOVEEEIGNTY. 

The House being in Committee of tlie Whole on the marshals' apj)ropriatiou bill, 
Jnne 27, 1879— 

Air. Garfield said: 

Mr. Chairman, "to this favor" it has come at last. The great fleet 
that set out on the 18th of March, with all its freightage and armament, 
is so shattered that now all the valuables it carried are embarked in this 
little craft, to meet whatever fate the sea and the storm may offer. This 
little bill contains the residuum of almost everything that has been the 
subject of controversy at the present session. I will not discuss it in 
detail, but will speak only of its central feature, and especially of the 
opinions which the discussion of that feature has brought to the siu-face 
during the present session. The majority in this Congress have adopted 
what I consider very extreme and dangerous opinions on certain im- 
portant constitutional questions. They have not only drifted back to 
their old attitude on the subject of State sovereignty, but they have 
pushed that doctrine much further than most of their predecessors ever 
went before, except diuing the period immediately i)receding the late 
war. 

So extreme are some of these utterances, that nothing short of actual 
quotations from the Eecord will do their authors justice. I therefore 
shall read several extracts from debates at the present session of Con- 
gress, and group them in the order of the topics discussed. 

Senator Wallace (Congressional Eecord, June 3, pages 3 and o) says: 

The Federal CTOverimient has no voters; it can make none, it can constitutionally 
control none. * ^ * When it asserts the power to create and hold '^iialional elec- 
tions" or to regulate the conduct of the voter on election day, or to maintain equal 
snffrafjt, it tramples under foot the very basis of the Federal system and seeks to build 
a consolidated govemnient from a democratic repuljlic. This is the plain purpose of 
the men now in control of the Federal Government, and to this end the teachings of 
leading Eexjublicans now are shaped. 

There are no national voters. Voters who vote for national Eepresentath-es are 
(iualitied by State constitutions and State laws, and national citizenship is not re- 
([uii-ed of a voter of the State by any provision of the Federal Constitution nor in 
l)ractice. 

* * * * # * # 

If there be such a thing, then, as a "national election," it Avants the first element 
of an election — a national voter. The Federal Government, or (if it suits our friends 
on the other side better) the nation, has no voters. It cannot create them, it cannot 
qualify them. 

Eepresentative Clark, of Missouri (Eecord, April 26, page 60), says: 

The United States has no voters. 

Senator Maxey, Texas (Eecord, April 21, page 72), says: 

It follows as surely as "grass grows and water runs" that, under our Constitution, 
the entire control of elections nnist be under the State whose voters assemble ; whose 
right to vote is not drawn from the Constitution of the United States, but existed and 
was freely exercised long before its adoption. 
44 



45 

Senator Williams, Kentucky (Eecord, April 25, page 8), says: 

The legislatirres of tlie States and the people of the several districts are the constitu- 
ency of Senators and Representatives in Congress. They receive their commissions 
from the governor, and when they resign (which is very seldom) they send their resig- 
nations to the governor and not to the President. They are State officers and not 
Federal officers. 

Senator Whyte (Eecord, May 21, page 14) says: 

There are no elections of United States officers and no voters of the United States. 
The voters are voters of the States, they are the people of the States, and their mem- 
bers of the House of Representatives are chosen by the electors of the States to repre- 
sent the people of the States, whose agents they are. 

Mr. McLane. Do I understand him to say that the Government of the United States 
has the right to keep the peace anywhere within a State ? Do I understand him to 
say that there is any ''peace of the'United States" at all recognized by the Su^jreme 
Court of the United States ? 

Mr. Robeson. Certainly I do. — (Record, April 4, page 14.) 

Mr. McLane (Record, April 4, page 15) says : 

I believe that the provision of law which we are about to repeal is unconstitutional ; 
that is to say, that it is unconstitutional for the United States to "keep the peace" 
anywhere in the States, either at the polls or elsewhere ; and if it were constitutional, 
I believe in common with gentlemen on this side of the House that it would be highly 
inexpedient to exercise that power. 

When that law used the phrase "to keep the peace" it could only mean the peace 
of the States. 

It is not a possible tiling to have a breach of the United States peace at the polls. 

Senator Whyte (Record, May 21, page 18) says : 

Sovereignty is lodged with the States, where it had its home long l)efore the Con- 
stitution was created. The Constitution is the creature of that sovereignty. The 
Federal Government has no inherent sovereignty. All its sovereign powers are drawn 
from the States. ■,■ ^ 

The States were in existence long before the Union, and the latter took its birth 
from their power. 

w* * * * * * 

The State governments are supreme by inherent power originally conceded to them 
by the people as to the control of local legislation and administration. The Federal 
Government has no part or lot in this vast mass of inherent sovereign power, and its 
interference therewith is utterly unwarrantable. 

Senator Wallace (Record, June 3, pp. 3 and 4) says : 

' Thus we have every branch of the Federal Government, House, Senate, the execu- 
tive and judiciary departments, standing upon the State governments, and all resting 
finally upon the people of the States, quaUfied as voters by State constitutions and 
State laws. 
Senator Whyte (Record, May 21, p. 15) says : 

No Mr. President ; it never was declared that we were a nation. 

'if * ^ * * * * 

In the formation and adoption of the Constitution the States were the factors. 

These are the declarations of seven distinguished members of the 
present Congress. The doctrines set forth in the above quotations may 
be fairly regarded as the doctrines of the Democracy as represented in 

this Capitol. 

Let me summarize them: First, there are no national elections; sec- 
ond, the United States has no voters ; third, the States have the exclu- 
sive right to control all elections of members of Congress; fourth, the 
Senators and Representatives in Congress are State oflflcers, or, as they 
have been called during the present session, " embassadors " or " agents' 
of the State; fifth, the United States has no authority to keep the peace 
anywhere within a State, and, in fact, has no peace to keep ; sixth, the 
United States is not a nation endowed with sovereign power, but is a 



46 

confederacy of States ; seventh, the States are sovereio'uties possessing 
inherent supreme powers; thej' are older than the Union, and as in- 
dependent sovereignties the State governments created the Union and 
determined and limited the powers of the General Government. 

These declaratioifs embody the sum total of the constitutional doc- 
trines which the Democracy has avowed during this extra session of 
Congress. Tliey forjn a body of doctrines which I do not hesitate to say 
are more extreme than was ever before held on this subject, except per- 
haps at the very crisis of secession and rebellion. 

And they have not been put forth as abstract theories of government. 
Trne to the logic of their convictions, tlic majority have sought to put 
them in practice by affirmative acts of legislation. 

Let me enumerate these attempts. First, they have denounced as 
unconstitntional all attempts of the United States to supervise, regulate, 
or protect national elections, and have tried to repeal all laws on the 
national statute-book enacted for that purpose. Second, following the 
advice given by Calhoun in his political testament to his party, they 
have tried to repeal all those portions of the venerated judiciary act of 
1789, the act of 1833 against nnllification, the act of 18GI, and the acts 
amendatory thereof, "s\iiich provide for carrying to the Supreme Court 
of the United States all controversies that relate to the duties and 
authority of any officer acting under the Constitution and laws of the 
United States. 

Third. They have attempted to prevent the President from enforcing 
the laws of the Union, by refusing necessarj^ supplies and by forbidding 
the nse of the Army to suppress violent resistance to the laws, by wliich, 
if they had succeeded, they would have left the citizens and the author- 
ities of the States free to obey or disobey the laws of the Union as they 
might choose. 

This, I believe, Mr. Chairman, is a fair summary both of the principles 
and the attempted practice to which the majority of this House has 
treated the country during the extra session. 

Before quitting this topic, it is worth while to notice the fact that the 
attempt made in one of the bills now pending in this House, to curtail 
the jurisdiction of the national courts, is in the direct line of the teach- 
iugs of John C.Calhoun. In his ''Discourse on the Constitution and 
Government of the United States," published by authority of the Legis- 
lature of South Carolina in 1851, he sets forth at great length tlie doc- 
trine that ours is not a national government, but a confederacy of sov- 
ereign States, and then proceeds to point out what he considers the 
dangerous departures which the government has made from his theory 
of the Constitution. 

The first and most dangerous of these departures he declares to be 
the a<loptiou of the twenty-fifth section of the judiciary act of 1789, by 
which appeals were authorized from the judgments of the supreme 
courts of the States to the Supreme ('ourt of the LTnited States. He 
declares that section of the act unconstitutional, because it makes the 
suprenu^. court of a "sovereign" State subordinate to the judicial power 
of the United States; and he recommends his followers never forest 
until tliey have repealed, not only that section, but also what he calls 
the still more dangerous law of 1833, wliich forbids the courts of the 
States to sit in judgment on the acts of an officer of the United States 
done in pursuance of national law. The present Congress has won the 
unenviable distinction of making the first attempt, since the death of 
Calhoun, to revive and put in practice his disorganizing and destructive 
theory of government. 



47 

Firmly believing that these doctrines and attempted practice of the 
present Congress are erroneous and pernicious, I will state briefly the 
counter-propositions : 

I affirm : First, that the Constitution of the United States was not 
created by the government, of the States, but was ordained and estab- 
lished by the only sovereign in this country — the common superior of 
both the States and the nation — the people themselves ; second, that 
the United States is a nation, having a government whose powers, as 
defined and limited by the Constitution, operate upon all the States in 
their corporate capacity and upon all the people; third, that by its legis- 
lative, executive, and judicial authority, the nation is armed with ade- 
quate power to enforce all the provisions of the Constitution against all 
opposition of individuals or of States, at all times and all places within 
the Union. 

These are broad x)ropositions-, and I take the few minutes remaining 
to defend them. The constitutional liistory of this country, or rather 
the history of sovereignty and government in this country, is comi^rised 
in four sharply defined epochs — 

First. Prior to the 4th da^- of July, 1776, sovereignty, so far as it can 
be aftirmed of this country, was lodged in the Crown of Great Britain. 
Every member of every colony (the colonists were not citizens but sub- 
jects) drew his legal rights fi"om the Crown of Great Britain. " Every 
acre of land in this country was then held mediately or immediately by 
grants from that Cro^\ni," and "all the civil authority then existing or 
exercised here, flowed from the head of the British Empire." 

Second. On the 4th day of July, 1770, the people of these colonies, as- 
serting their natural inherent right as sovereigns, withdrew the sover- 
eignty from the Crown of Great Britain and reserved it to themselves. 
In so tar as they delegated this national authority at all, they delegated 
it to the Continental Congress assembled at Philadelphia. That Con- 
gress, by general consent, became the supreme government of this coun- 
try — executive, judicial, and legislative in one. During the whole of 
its existence it wielded the sux)reme power of the new nation. 

Third. On the 1st day of March, 17<S1, the same sovereign power, the 
people, withdrew the authority from the Continental Congress and lodged 
it, so far as they lodged it at all, with the Confederation, which, though 
a league of States, was declared to be a perpetual union. 

Fourth. When at last our fathers found the confederation too weak 
and inefficient for the purposes of a great nation, they abobshed it and 
lodged the national authority, enlarged and strengthened by new powers, 
in the Constitution of the United States, where, in spite of all assaults, 
it still remains. All these great acts were done by the only sovereign 
in this Eepublic, the people themselves. 

That no one may charge that I pervert history to sustain my own 
theories, I call attention to the fact that not one of the colonies declared 
itself free and independent. Neither Virginia nor Massachusetts threw 
off its allegiance to the British Crown as a colony. The great decla- 
ration was ma\le not even by all the colonies as colonies, but it was made 
in the name an<l by authority of "all the good people of the colonies" 
as one people. 

Let me fortify this position by a great name that will shine forever in 
the constellation of om* Southern sky— the name of Charles Coatsworth 
Pinckney, of South Carolina. He was a leading member of the consti- 
tutional convention of 1787, and also a member of the convention of 
South Carobna which ratified the Constitution. In that latter conven- 
tion the doctrine of State sovereignty found a few champions j and their 



48 

attempt to prevent the adoption of the Constitution, because it estab- 
lished a supreme national government, was rebuked by him in these 
memorable words. I quote from his speech as recorded iu Elliott's 
Debates : 

This admirable manifesto, which for importanceof matter and elegance of composition 
stands nnrivaled, snfficiently confutes the honorable gentleman's doctrine of the indi- 
vidual sovereignty and independence of the several States. In that declaration the 
several States are not even enumerated, hut after reciting, in nervous language and 
with convincing arguments, our right to independence and the tyranny which com- 
pelled us to assert it, the declaration is made in the following words: "We, therefore, 
the representatives of the United States of America, in general congress assembled, 
apxiealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, iu 
the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish 
and declare that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and inde- 
pendent States." 

The se])arate independence and individual sovereignty of the several States were 
never thought of by the enlightened band of patriots wlio framed this declaration. 
The several States are not even mentioned by name in any part of it, as if it was 
intended to impress this maxim on America, that our freedom and independence arose 
from our union, and that without it we could neither be free nor independent. Let 
us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this union by maintaining that each is sepa- 
rately and individually independent as a species of political heresy, which can never 
benefit us, liut may bring on us the most serious distresses. 

For a further and equally powerful vindication of the same view I 
refer to the Commentaries of Justice Story, vol. 1, p. 197. 

In this same connection, and as a pertinent and effective response to 
the Democratic doctrines under review, I quote from the first annual 
message of Abraham Lincoln, than whom no man of our generation 
studied the origin of the Union more profoundly. He said : 

Our States have neither more nor less power than that reserved to them in the Union 
by the Constitution, no one of them ever having been a State out of the Union. The 
original ones passed into the Union even he/ore they cast oft" their British colonial 
dependence, and the new ones each came into the Union directly from a condition of 
dependence, excepting Texas. And even Texas, in its temporary independence, was 
never designated a State. The new ones only took the designation of States on com- 
ing into the Union, Avhile that name was first adopted for the old ones by the Declara- 
tion of Independence. Therein the "united colonies" were declared to be "free and 
independent States;" but, even then, the object plainly was not to declare their inde- 
pendence of one another, or of the Union, but directly the contrary, as their mutual 
pledge and their mutual action before, at the time, and afterward abundantly show. 

The States have their status in the Union, and they have no other legal status. 
If they break from this, they can only do so against law and by revolution. The 
Union, and not themselves separately, procured theii' independence and their liberty. 
By conquest or purchase, the Union gave each of them whatever of independence and 
liberty it has. The Union is older than any of the States, and in fact it created them 
as States. Originally some dependent colonies made the Union, and in turn the Union 
threw oft' their old dependence for them and made them States, such as they are. Not 
one of them ever had a State constitution independent of the Union. Of course it is 
not forgotten that all the new States framed their constitutions before they entered 
the Union ; nevertheless, dependent upon and i)reparatory to coming into the Union. 

In further enforcement of the doctrine that the State governments 
were not the sovereigns who created this government, I refer to the 
great decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of 
Chisholm vs. The State of Georgia, reported in 2 Dallas, a decision 
replete with the most enlightened national spirit, in which the court 
stamps with its indignant condemnation the notion that the State of 
Georgia was "sovereign" iu any sense that made it independent of or 
superior to the nation. 

Mr. Justice Wilson said: 

A3 a judge of this court I know, and (^an decide upon the knowledge, that the citi- 
zens of Georgia, when they acted upon the large scale of the Union as a part of the 
"people of the United States," did not surrender the supreme or sovereign power to 



49 

that State ; but, as to the purposes of the Union, retained it to themselves. As to the 
inirposes of the Union, therefore, Georgia is not a sovereign State. 

Whoever considers in a coail)ined and comprehensive view the general texture of 
tlio Constitution will he satisfied that the people of the United States intended to form 
themselves into a nation for national purposes. They instituted for such purposes a 
national government, complete in all its parts, with powers legislative, executive, and 
judiciary, and in all those powers extending over the whole nation. Is it congruous 
that, with regard to such purposes, any man or body of men, any person, natural or 
ajtilicial, should be permitted to claim successfully an entire exemption from the juris- 
diction of the national goveniment? 

Mr. Chairman, the dogma of State sovereignty which has reawakened 
to such vigorous life in this chamber, has borne such bitter fruits and 
entaiknl such suffering upon our people that it deserves more particular 
notice. It shouhl be noticed that the word " sovereignty " cannot be 
fitly applied to any government in this country. It is not found in our 
Constitution. It is a feudal word, born of the despotism of the middle 
ages, and was unknown even in imperial Kome. A " sovereign " is a 
person, a prince who has subjects that owe him allegiance. There is no 
one paramount sovereign in the United States. There is no person 
here who holds any title or authority whatever, except the official 
authority given him by law. Americans are not subjects, but citizens. 
Our only sovereign is the whole people. To talk about the " inherent 
sovereignty" of a corporation — an artiftcial person — is to talk nonsense; 
and we ought to reform our habit of speech on that subject. 

But what do gentlemen mean when they tell us that a Statue is sovereign I 
What does sovereignty mean, in its accepted use, but a i)olitical corpor- 
ation having no superior '? Is a State of this Union such a corporation ? 
Let us test it by a few examples drawn from the Constitution. No State 
of this Union can make war or conclude a peace. Without the con- 
sent of Congress it cannot raise or support an army or a navy. It can- 
not make a treaty with a foreign power, nor enter into any agreement or 
compact with another State. It cannot levy imi^osts or duties on imports 
or exi)orts. It cannot coin money. It cannot regulate commerce. 

It cannot authorize a single ship to go into commission anywhere om- 
the high seas ; if it should, that ship would be seized as a pirate or con- 
fiscate<l by the laws of the United States. A State cannot emit Mils 
of credit. It can enact no law which makers anything but gold and sil- 
ver a legal tender. It has no flag except the flag of the Union. And 
there are many other subjects on which the States are forbidden by the 
Constitution to legislate. 

How much inherent sovereignty is left in a corporation which is thus 
shorn of all these great attributes of sovereignty ? 

But this is not all. The Supreme Conrt of the United States may 
declare null and void any law or any clause of the constitution of a State 
which happens to be in conflict with the Constitution and laws of the 
United States. Again, the States appear as plaintiffs and defendants 
before the Supreme Court of the United States. They may sue each 
other ; and, until the eleventh amendment was adopted, a citizen might, 
sue a State. These " sovereigns " may all be summoned before their" 
common superior to be judged. And yet they are endowed with su- 
preme inherent sovereignty ? 

Again, the government of a State may be absolutely abolished by 
Congress, in case it is not republican in form. And finally, to cap the 
climax of this absurd pretension, every right possessed by one of these 
" sovereign " States, every inherent sovereign right except the single 
right to equal representation in the Senate, may be taken away, without 
its consent, by the vote of two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths 

4a 



50 

of the States. But, iu spite of all these disabilities, we hear them 
paraded as iudepeudent, sovereig-u States, the creators of the Uuiou and 
the dictators of its powers. How inherently " sovereign " must be that 
State west of the Mississippi which the nation bought and paid tor with 
the pubhc money, and permitted to come into the Union a half cen- 
tury after the Constitution was adopted! And yet we are tohl that the 
States are inherently sovereign and created the national government. 
Read a long line of luminous decisions of the Supreme Court. Take 
the life of Chief- Justice Marshall, that great judge, who found the Con- 
stitution paper and made it a power, who found it a skeleton and clothed 
it with flesh and blood. By his wisdom and genius he made it the potent 
and beneficent in stiument for the government of a great nation. Every- 
where he repelled the insidious and dangerous heresy of the sovereignty 
of the States in the sense in which it has been used in these debates. 

Half a century ago, this heresy threatened the stability of the nation. 
The eloquence of Webster and his compeers and the patriotism and 
high courage of Andrew Jackson resisted and for a time destroyed its 
power : but it continued to live as the evil genius, the incarnate devil, of 
America ; and in 18C1 it was the fatal phantom that lured eleven mil- 
lions of our people into rebellion against their government. Hundreds 
of thousands of those who took up arms against the Union, stubbornly 
resisted all inducements to that fatal step until they were summoned 
bv the authority of their States. 

'The dogma of State sovereignty in alliance with chattel slavery finally 
made its appeal to that court of last resort where the laws are silent 
and where kings and nations appear in arms for judgment. In that 
awfid court of war two questions were tried. Shall slavery livef And 
is a State so sovereign that it may nullify the laws and destroy the 
Union f Those two questions were tried on the thousand battle-fields of 
the war; and if war ever "legislates," as a leading Democrat of Ohio 
once wisely affirmed, then our war legislated finally upon those subjects, 
and determined, beyond all controversy, that slavery should never again 
Uve in this Republic, and that there is not sovereignty epough m any 
State to authorize its people either to destroy the Union or nullity its 
laws. 

I am unwilling to believe that any considerable number of Americans 
will ever again push that doctrine to the same extreme ; and yet, in 
these summer months of 1879, in the Congress of the reunited nation, 
we find the majority drifthig fast and far in the wrong du^ection, by re- 
asserting much of that doctrine which the war ought to have settled 
forever. And what is more lamentab le, such declarations as those which 
I read at the outset are finding their echoes in many portions of the 
country which was lately the theater of war. Ko one can read the pro- 
ceedings at certain recent celebrations, without observing the growing 
determination to assert that the men who fought against the Union 
were not engaged in treasonable conspiracy against the nation, but that 
they did right to fight for their States, and that, in the long run, the 
lost cause will be victorious. These indications are filling the people 
with anxiety and indignation ; and they are beginning to inquire whether 
the war has really settled these great questions. 

I remind gentlemen on the other side that we have not ourselves 
revived these issues. We had hoped they were settled beyond recall, 
and that peace and friendship might be fully restored to our people. 

But the truth requires me to say that there is one indispensable ground 
of agreement on which alone we can stand together, and it is this : The 
war for the Union was right, everlastingly right [applause] ; and the war 



61 

ii^ainst the Union was wrong, forever wrong. However lionest and 
sincere individnals may have been, the secession was none the less rebel- 
lion and treason. We defend the States in the exercise of their many 
and important rights, and we defend with eqnal zeal the rights of the 
United States. The rights and anthority of both were received from 
tlic peoi>le — the oidy sonrce of inherent power. 

We insist n<jt only that this is a nation, bnt that the power of the gov- 
ernment, within its own prescribed sphere, operates directly npon the 
States and n|)()n all the people. We insist that onr laws shall be cou- 
strned by onr own conrts and enforced by onr Executive. Any theory 
which is inconsistent with this doctrine we will resist to the end. 

Applying these reflections to the subject of national elections em- 
braced in this bill, I remind gentlemen that this is a national House of 
Kepresentatives. The people of my Congressional district have a right 
to know that a man elected in New York City is elected honestly and 
lawfnlly; for he joins in making laws for forty-five millions of people. 
lOvery citizcMi of tin? United States has an interest and a right in every 
election within the republic wliere national representatives are chosen. 
We insist that these laws relating to our national elections shall be 
enforced, not nullified; shall remain on the statute-books, and not be 
repealed; and that the just and legal sui)ervision of these elections 
ought never again to be surre ndered by the Government of the United 
States. By our consent it neve r shall be surrendered. / [Applause.] 

Now, Mr. Chairman, this bill is about to be launched upon its stormy 
passage. It goes not into unkn own waters ; for its fellows have been 
wrecked in the same sea. Its short, disastrous, and, I may add, ignoble 
A'oyage is likely to be straight to the bottom, [Applause.] 



In reply to Mr. Hard, same day, Mr. Garfield said: 

j\[r. Chairman. Two points were made by my colleague from Ohio 
[]Mr. llurdj to whicli I desire to call attention. To strengthen his posi- 
tion, that the United States has no voters, he has quoted, as other gen- 
tlemen have quoted, the case of Minor vs. Happersett, 21 Wallace, 
page 170. 

The question before the court in that case was, whether a provision in 
the State constitution which confines the right of voting to male citizens 
of the United States is a violation of the fourteenth amendment of the 
Constitution. The court decided that it was not; and, in dehvering his 
opinion the Chief Justice took occasion to say that "the United States 
has no voters in the States, of its own creation." Now, all the gentle- 
men on the other side who have quoted this decision, have left out the 
words ^' of its own creation,^^ which makes a very essential difference. 
The Constitution of the United States declares who shall vote for mem- 
bers of Congress, and it adopts the great body of voters whose quahfl- 
catious may be or have been prescribed by the laws of the States. The 
power of ado2)tion is no less a great governmental power than the power 
of creation. 

But the second point to which I wish to refer, and which has been 
made by several gentlemen, and very markedly by my colleague [Mr. 
Hurd], is this : He says that the contemporaneous construction of that 
clause of the Constitution which pro\ides that Congress may at any 
time make or alter the regulations in regard to the time, jdace, and man- 
ner of holding elections, has determined that Congress can never exer- 
cise that right so long as tlie States make provisions for it. So long as 



52 

the States <lo not neglect or refuse to act, or are not prevented by rebel- 
lion or war from acting-, it was their exclusive right to control the 
subject. That is what niy colleague says. That is what is said in the 
Record of June 3 by a distinguished member of the Senate. 

Now, mark liow plaiu a tale sliall put tliat down. 

On the 21st day of August, 1789, in the first House of Representa- 
tives that ever met, Mr. Burke, a member from South Carolina, offered 
the following as one of the amendments to the Constitution. I will 
read it : 

Cono-ress sliall uot alter, modify, or interfere in tlie times, places, or manner of hold- 
ino- elections of Senators or Eepresentatives, except when any State shall refuse or 
neglect, or be unable by invasion or rebelliou, to make such elections. 

That was the very proposition which my colleague says is the mean- 
ino- of the Constitution as it now stands. This amendment was oftered 
inli House of Representatives nearly one-half of whose membership was 
made np of men who were in the convention that framed the Constitu- 
tion. That amendment was debated ; and I hold in my hand the l)rief 
record of the debate. Fisher Ames, of Massachusetts, approving of the 
clause as it now stands, said : 

He thou'vht this one of the most justifiable of all the powers of Congress. It was 
essential t") a body representing the whole community that they should have power 
to reo-ulate their own elections, in order to secure a representation from every part, 
and prevent any improper regulations, calculated to answer party pui-i)0ses only. It 
is a solecism in politics to let others judge for them, and is a departure from the prin- 
ciples upon which the Constftution Avas founded. * * * He thought no legislature 
was without the power to determine the mode of its own appointment ; *_ that 

such an amendment as was now proposed would alter the Constitution ; it would vest 
the supreme authoritv in places where it Avas never contemplated. . , r. . 

Mr. Madison Avas willing to make every amendment that Avas required by the States 
which did not tend to destrov the principles and efficacy of the Constitution ; he con- 
ceived that the proposed amendment would have that tendency; he was therefore 
opposed to it. . . • 4.1 • 

Mr. Sherman observed that the convention was very unanimous m passing this 
clause ; that it Avas an important provision, and if it was resigned it would tend to 
subvert the government. . * * * -n- +i 

Mr Goodhue hoped the amendment never would obtain. * JNoav, ratner 

than this amendment should take effect, he Avould vote against all that had been 
ao-reed to. His greatest appreheiisious Avere that the State governments wonhl oppose 
and thwart the general one to such a degree as finally to overturn it. Now, to guard 
against this evil, he wished the Federal government to possess every power necessary 
to its existence. 

After a full debate, in which the doctrine of State rights was com- 
pletely overwhelmed so far as this subject was concerned, the vote was 
taken, and 23 voted in fsivor of the amendment and 28 voted against it. 
It did not get even a majority, much less a two-thirds vote, in the House; 
and it never was called up in the Senate at all. 

^ow, Avho were the men that voted against it ? Let me read some of 
their honored names; Fisher Ames, of Massachnsetts ; Charles Car- 
roll, of Carrollton ; Clymer, of Pennsylvania, whose distinguished de- 
scendant is a member 'of this House; Fitzsimmons, of Pennsylvania; 
Muhlenberg, of Pennsylvania, who was S])eaker of the first House of Rep- 
resentatives ; Lee ami Madison, of Virginia ; Trumbull and Sherman, of 
Connecticut— all those great names are recorded against the very con- 
struction of the Constitution which my colleague defends as the correct 
iiiterpi-etation of the exi.sting clause on that subject. That is all I desire 
to sav. 



ANCIENT AND MODERN PANICS. 

After the jonrual was read, July 1, 1879, several geutlemen made persoual explaua- 
tions as follows :_ 

Mr. Ellis. I ri.se to a question of personal privilege. 

The Speajoer. How much time does the geutlemau desire 1 

Mr. Ellis. Onlj- time enough to have read by the Clerk the article 
which I send to the desk, and to say that it is false. 

Mr. Garfield. I think we had better have this thing out, now that 
it Ijas been started. I hope the article will l)e read. 

The Clerk read as follows : 

THE CONGRESSIOXAL MUDDLE — GOSSIP AT THE CAPITOL ABOUT AX ALLEGED BARGAIX. 

It is rumored at the Capitol to-day, and generally believed, that if Congress ad- 
journs at four o'clock on Monday without providing for the pay of United States mar- 
shals, the President Avill forthwith issue his proclamation for an extra session of Con- 
gress to assemble on Tuesday next. The President will veto the bill which was the 
product of the last Democratic caucus. It is believed, and is common talk at the 
Capitol, that in view of some arrangement made with about fourteen Southern Dem- 
ocrats, the cud will be that a bill for the pay of the marshals will be passed without 
any riders. Western Democrats say boldly that General Garfield made a trade with 
certain Southern Congressmen whereby in consideration of the Eepublicans allowing 
the bill to provide foi'the Mississippi River commission to be passed, those Congress- 
men pledged their votes to help the passage of all of the appropriation bills before 
Cougress tinally adj<nirnod. •' Why," said a Western Democrat to-day, " the trade is 
as plain as the nose on a man's face. President Hayes knows that through sharp 
practices of General Garfield and other Republican leaders the Democrats are divided, 
and that if he keeps on pressing Congress he can eventually dictate any terms he 
■wants. He proposes, therefore, to take advantage of it, and hence will not permit 
Congress to go away until he gets all of the necessary supplies to carry on the gov- 
ernment without restrictions of any kind." To-day there is a good deal of talk among 
the Western men, who say that while they are certain that a few Southern men have 
made a trade, and mean to sell their Northern allies out, that it may be the goods 
cannot be delivered. They declare with all the vehemence of language that they will 
filibuster against the passage of any other bill for the support of the marshals than 
the one which will be sent to the President and which will be vetoed. McMahon, of 
Ohio, lias even gone so far as to serve notice on certain Southern leaders that here- 
after he will not vote for any bill looking to improvements in the South, as a distinct- 
ive proposition. The votes w^hich it is claimed the Administration has secured 
through General Garfield's diplomacy are all of the Louisiana delegation, three from 
South Carolina, three fi-om Georgia, and two from Alabama. 

Mr. Ellis. Mr. Speaker, life is too short generally to stop to kick at 
every cur that barks about our heels. I usually take no notice of false- 
hoods pulilished about me in the papers ; and I would not do so on this 
occasion, but counseling with some friends, gentlemen of more age and 
experience than myself, they think that some notice should be taken of 
this article. I take no fiu-ther notice of it than upon my own behalf, and 
on behalf of my colleagues who are also assailed in the article, to pro- 
nounce it unqualifiedly, deliberately, willfully false in every particular. 

Mr. EviNS. Mr. Speaker, it was not the intention of any member of 
the South Carolina delegation to take any notice of this article ; but, 
inasmuch as it has been read, all we have to say is that it is unquali- 
fiedly ftilse; there is not a word of truth in it. 

Mr. AcKLEN. I think it is in order for the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. 
GarfieldJ to rise to a personal explanation. [Laughter.] 



54 

Mr. Garfield. Mr. Speaker, I do not rise to a personal explanation, 
but to respond to the inquiry of the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. 
Acklen]. I happened to be re-reading the other day that interesting 
old history of Xenophon in which he describes the retreat of the ten 
thousand Greeks. A little incident recorded in that work will illustrate 
the subject which gentlemen are discussing. One night there suddenly 
sprang up in the Grecian camp without apparent cause what is known 
as an army panic. 

The Speaker. Does the gentleman rise to a personal explanation ? 
[Laughter.] 

Mr. Garfield. Oh, no, sir; I am only answering a question. All at 
once the veteran Greeks appeared to be seized with consternation, and 
began to flee in all directions. Clearchus, an unscrupulous but adroit 
general, appreciating the danger of the situation, with ready invention 
ordered his trumpeter to announce throughout the camp in a loud voice 
that Clearchus offered a thousand talents of silver as a reward to any 
one who should discover who it was that let the ass loose among the 
armor. [Laughter.] He invented this clever device to stay the panic. 
The lie was successful ; and the fleeing Greeks returned with laughter 
to their tents. 

Now, I take it that some slirewd but unscrupulous Democratic 
leader of the House, fearing that by a stroke of good sense some 
of his party, and especially some from the South, were going to be 
patriotic enough to put through the necessary appropriations for the 
support of the government — fearing, in short, a panic in the party 
camp — got up this fiction of a trade, in order to bring back all his sol- 
diers to their tents. Who represents Clearchus, and who the ass in this 
new retreat, gentlemen must judge for themselves. But the whole 
story is an absurd fiction, which ought to distiub no one. 







I "-. -. vo.v:;//^'',>/.'> 



